Winter's Oath
by Silver Blazen
Summary: "I will protect you." he declared out his mission and held her close as he shielded her with his body heat against the winter storm. He knew this task wasn't going to be easy, but she needed him, and for once the soldier obeyed his heart. Pre- Captain America: The Winter Soldier. (Artwork belongs to pain-art on DA)
1. Chapter 1

**Winter's Oath**

**All characters belong to Marvel Comics**

**I own nothing**

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**_\+ Prologue +_**

Saint Petersburg, Санкт-Петербург, Russia

Winter's light fell against the glass planes of the frosted window; steady and tranquil. A faint glow of amber from dimming candlelight flickered against the wall; pieces of plaster had scattered across hardwood, and dark puddles of maroon had collected underneath vacant shadows of the dining room. Encroaching smells of death hung over every corner; echoes of rapid gun fire consumed the deary silence as obscured shaped loomed in the white abyss around her had become phantoms, merciless and carrying the ambiance of terror.

Hidden in the sables of darkness, with heaving breaths of panic was the only survivor from the invasive attack. A observer pulled in the thralls of brutality and devastation which had pure into her household. There was no warning. Her father was first target, and then her mother and sister. They had been stolen from her, unfairly by snipers hidden in darkness of the outside world. The child seem to had imaged that she would be starring into the void of had curled her trembling body underneath the furnished table; with one shaky hand gripping the wooden leg, and the other hand cradled over the gaping bullet wound which had compromised her tensed and bruised stomach.

The girl felt the sniper slug and glass shards beginning to dig further into pierced layers of her muscle. Each fragment felt like it was puncturing her internal organs; until she had become a victim of the coldness searing into her rattled bones. She felt the numbness and the weaving the blood pulsing in her veins.

She never cried.

It was almost like her emotions had become frozen. Her caramel eyes darkened from shafts of light, and delicate pink shaded lips grew into a still expression. Her traumatized mind conceived illusions of dark wraiths lurking outside the borders of her home;, daring her to move outside. Instead, she kept a frightened gaze locked on the tarnished silver locket before her quivering frame. Smears of blood of her mother's blood had stained over the chained necklace. The girl knew it now belonged to her. She had become the new heir of her family's heirloom when her mother pulled it off her neck before the sniper bullet had sliced through her heart.

Panting out a heavy, strained breath, the child reached for the locket, forcing the muscles in her arms to twist as she grasped the necklace. Without any hesitation, she bolted out the back kitchen door, never looking back at the lifeless bodies of her family.

Wincing in thralls of relentless pain, she moved aimlessly against the sables of thick darkness. She ignored the freezer burns on the soles of her bare feet while she wrapped her arms over her chest. Stumbling to keep balanced, she dragged her small body in staggered footing over the mounts of thick snow. She dared a glance of what was ahead of her as her wobbling legs pushed through the sheets of white. Violent slashes of wind cut through her skin, giving her only the sensation of numbness as warm blood trickled over her temple. She had been given the proper motivation to carry on, she struggled against the dead weight dragging her further into the deep snow. She had to run, find a shelter against the harsh storm encasing over her shivering body.

It felt like death was hesitating as the flakes landed in her disheveled long brown strands of hair, but she kept on pushing herself, avoiding the areas of the fresh tire tracks etched in the snow. The biting gusts of the moaning wind lashed rushes of ice over her pale blemished skin of her cheeks. Her lips chilled, and her voice felt like it was locked away as she tried to call out for help. Listening over a response to her desperate cries, the child halted in her tracks and listened to the ear-splitting sound of terror knelling in the snowy air. She wondered if a monster lurked in the pitch of darkness, waiting to devour her weakened form. The silent emptiness was all that dulled in her ears.

"I told you everything I know..." A shuttering, and breathless voice hollered like a haunting whisper in the thick obscurity of the over barren estate grounds. A thumping of boots sloshing over puddles of slush against the muffled silence. With his elusive steps a pungent stench of metal and gunpowder wavered from him. Cautious, he advanced closer to his prey.

A man dressed in black frantically glance over his shoulder, daring himself to stare at the towering figure impending in the shrouds of darkness. He was starring into the unblinking pale blue eyes of a wolfish creature. The face of the male was covered by a graphite mask, only his piercing gaze ripped through the curtains of mussed hair. With a struggling plea of mercy, a loud and abrasive growl followed.

"Stay away from me," he yelled out, and then scrambled onto his feet, crashing into a pile of trash cans and landing flat on his face.

He lifted his scraped chin, shivering as he stared with bewilderment at the dark, imposing figure stalked closer with slow and calculating strides.

Blinking the pain out of his eyes as he felt the blood in his veins turned cold and air rushed through his lungs. Sweat chilled against his pallid skin as he lay on the frozen ground dazed and laden. A vulnerable lump of flesh -defenseless for the attack.

"I gave you the window to engage. I followed your orders." he shrieked, heart pounding with every jolt of fear that spiked in his blood. The world spun world around, vision swam into a crimson haze. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and dared himself once again to stare up at the nightmare mirroring his gaze.

"Why is he doing this? I followed my orders. I kept my mouth shut." he managed to wheeze out, maroon leaking from his swollen mouth.

The attacker said nothing, just glared down at him with murderous glacial blue embers of molten dread. A flash of headlights reflected over the white ground, revealing the ghostly visage of a man garbed fully in Kevlar combat gear towered over the target like a wolf to a cornered rabbit-he was barely visible to the darkness. He had brown shoulder length that was draped over his jaw. He wore a mask that covered a portion of his face, and his vibrant, soulless and unnerved blue eyes were glimmering with intensity of a lurid hunter.

His metal hand screeched with inorganic, and mechanical noises as it clamped over sub machine gun when he brushed his gloved hand over the breech of his weapon, and lowered the muzzle suppressor over the man's pulsing throat. "You're time is running out." he snarled against the mask, his eyes changeless with no sense of empathy. Just pure malice and automaton precision. "All targets are destroyed. You're services are no longer required. Goodbye comrade."

Spiting up a gob of blood, the man protested against the threat. "I know who you are...The Winter Soldier." He choked as powerful hands clasped over his thinned neck, and squeezed bone shifting pressure against his thorax. The smell of chilled metal tainted the air, and he fought against the restricting hold, clawing at the chrome arm, and yanked a strip of leather off. He tried to free himself from the unbidden clutches of merciless Russian assassin.

He squeezed hard on metal, digging his finger nails into serrated edges of the plates, but the Winter Soldier was relentless and pressed his leather glove hard over his mouth, smothering the breath out of him. During those last moments of his struggle, he fell into a trance, gazing into icy blue eyes, watching the expression grew vicious, inhumane and cold. The masked man ripped his shirt with one swipe of a knife, and then fired the machine gun. Within seconds and the caliber bullet exploded in the man's chest.

Agony erupted through every fiber of his body; the man's head smacked backwards, his teeth stained with blood.

Mustering up his strength, he fought to stay alert, unable to move. Breath was betraying him. Panic invaded his racing heart, blood churned in his veins. "When day HYDRA's reign of terror will end!" he roared, his voice fading, and eyes fluttering to the back of his skull. Another clap of thunder escaped the gun, and the man became limp as a cold fish. His body flopped slightly against the snow before he released a faint breath.

The deaden eyes of the predator trained over a heap of snow, locking on the blood trail, each drop leading to a cluster of ice encased evergreens.

"Directive has been successful. Target has been extracted." the Winter Soldier said in a low voice, as he pressed his comlink. "Hail, HYDRA."

An emotionless smirk stifled over his chilled lips, and one eye looked through the scope of the weapon-aiming the red marker on a small child trudging frantically through the snow. His finger hesitated over the trigger. He couldn't fire a killing shot. Instead, he he lowered the weapon, pointing the muzzle to the ground, and then he stared intently at the spatters of blood that had painted over the snow.

Then, he saw something that made his frozen heart shudder against his armor. A body of the child was laying on the ground, her dark locks fanned across slush and a macabre of blood. Her chest was heaving out labored exhales of forced breath.

Sucking in a deep breath, the Winter Soldier reluctantly approached the wounded girl cautiously, his heavy boots crunched in the snow, and feral blue eyes narrowed on her pale face. Silently, he lowered his weapon to his side, and tentatively crouched down next to her laden body. Lifting his head, he trained his eyes on the distant glow of firelight from an explosion. He fell into a trance, gaping at the smoke rising from the blown out windows of a building, and acutely listened to the echoes of straits from sirens.

This was his world.

Feeling, a brush of sentiment creep over his rugged skin, he gently dragged his metal knuckles across the snow, and lightly caressed her cheek. He constantly scanned his intense gaze over the area; searching for another agent to aid him. He had been created not to feel-not to show compassion, but looking down at the innocent life struggling for her survival caused him to breakout the void of his programming and become human again. He felt the urge to save her.

Mutely, he bowed his head, his ratty locks of dark hair draped over his frozen cheeks, and he removed his mask, tossing it aside and listening to clang when it hit the ground. Instinctively, he brushed a soothing motion of his lips over her forehead, allowing a wet heat to penetrate over her pale skin, and he kissed her, giving her his warmth. It felt natural to him.

"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to hurt you," he spoke in broken Russian, sliding his hand over the shard of glass sticking out of her right side. He painfully yanked it out of her while keeping his mouth latched onto her skin. The child snapped her brown eyes open, and let out a painful scream of anguish. Tears solidified over her cheeks, and blood dripped from the corner of her full red lips. She gasped, and thrashed in panic, but he kept her stable when she lifted her gaze up, studying him with bewildered, watery eyes.

His hair was thick and rich, disheveled chestnut cascading off the planes of his shoulders and off his face-displaying the youthful, chiseled lines of his youthful, rugged face. The warm glow enhanced the details of his gentle pale azure eyes as clear as a December sky and his well-defined jaw line smooth from a shave. His beautifully curved, full lips held the faint essence of a human smile, and metal hand cupped the side of her delicate face. "Are you ..." she managed to say in broken voice, rubbing her shaky fingers over his mouth. "Going to kill me?"

He grabbed her thin wrist, gently, and pulled her hand back. "No." he answered with a sullen voice, and wrapped his broad arms over her small frame, lifting her carefully up from the ground, and cradling her securely against the armor of his broad chest. He watched her eyes close, and her lips pressed over his heart. She felt safe with him. "Your hurt and medical attention." he exclaimed, settling his irked blue eyes over the area. Instinctively, he turned his head and looked intensely over his rigid shoulder—two men garbed in leather stood before a black van with automatic rifles slung over the broad span of their shoulders.

He swallowed thickly, steadying his breath—knowing that it was almost time for him to return to the ice and wait in a silent coffin until the he becomes needed again.

He nodded responsibly at their barking voices, and he advanced closer to the vehicle with methodical steps.

The Winter Soldier kept on looking down at the child nuzzled safe in his strong arms, and he knew that he would never lay his eyes on her ever- again.

He was never a chance to have contact with humanity beyond the barriers of HYDRA. He was a weapon created for a purpose to destroy life and not to shield it with his own mortality. Feeling, her shiver against the Kevlar armor encased over his chest, made the bones of his rib cage cramped up with sickening and harrowing tension as he vanished into the falling snow.

The locket gripped her hands, dangled off her limp fingers as it threatened to fall, but he caught the necklace with his bionic hand and placed it securely over her chest.

The good man who had dwelled deep inside of the layers of the hardened assassin, he wanted to tell her everything would be alright, but his lips sealed against the coldness, and his heart frozen as well. He placed her laden body carefully into the red stained hands of HYDRA.

He climbed into the back of the van and sat in the seat as silence cloaked over his menacing semblance.

Instinctively, as the assassin kept his trained his ghostly eyes locked on little girl's face resting flat on the seat before him, a part of him felt the iciness of a wave of uncertainty lap over him.

He looked down at his 9 mm silencer pistol strapped to his right thigh hostler, and then he took a deep breath as his metal fingers clutched the weapon and within seconds of pulling the trigger. The compromised driver's head smashed against the steering wheel and the vehicle loss its traction as tires swerved until the front of van collided with a tree. Seizing his moment, he climbed over the seat and wrapped his arms around her.

Narrowing his blue eyes down at her angelic, paled face, the Winter Soldier gave his oath to the child in a gentle cadence in his raspy and deep voice, "I will protect you." he declared out his mission in a muffled voice and held her close as his arms shielded her with his empowering thermal heat against the winter storm.

He knew this task wouldn't be easy, but she needed him, and for once the programmed soldier obeyed the one thing he thought he'd seem to feel again...His heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**{2}**

Resisting thrums of the wild pounds of his heart, the Winter Soldier trained his metallic azure eyes over contorted pieces of metal. Vivid shades of red flared dangerously against his enraged vision. Everything felt distorted…He couldn't restrain to each thrall of accessing sentiment that ran with heavy torrents across his addled mind.

A vague stench of gasoline wavered in the brisk air in that moment his senses became compromised. Masses of snow covered his tactical boots as he trudged away from the smoldering wreckage; leaving three lifeless bodies of HYDRA agents dangling out of the van's windows. Tonight, he displayed no mercy.

The snow topped area reeked of the aftermath from a brutal assault that he conducted. Smears of blood imprinted the ground as his footprints vanished against the falling snow.

_It had been a brutal attack. He used his combat knife with the precise effort to slice into their throats; he made the cut quick and painless. His metal hand restricted over chilled flesh and crushed bones as of the operatives tried to make an effortless reach for the orphaned girl, but he obstructed that directive, protecting her with feral and primal nature of a menacing wolf defending his wounded cub. He was vicious, lethal and savagely efficient to their weakness and it used his gain when he delivered the final assault. Screams of utter anguish finally diminished, as he coiled his arms securely around the child._

_At first, it felt unnatural to hold her small body against the protective Kevlar of his armored vest, her pulse was steady giving him an understanding that she wasn't afraid of him. After repressing the ache lancing through his heart, he indecisively smashed his boots through the back window, rolling into the snow, and her snug and protected from his weight . Defiance somehow found him again, a sense of attachment that he fought against as he permitted her head to rest against his flesh shoulder, not knowing that his hand was stroking through her disheveled brown strands. The contact he welcomed couldn't be avoided._

Those were only moments before, he trudged in methodical paces from the wreckage, his glacial metallic eyes possessed a clear passage, it was enforced instinct to distance her from the looming danger he sensed wavering in the shadows: he had to succeed tonight.

Turning his head, lengthy tresses of dark hair lashed against his hollowed cheekbones, he stole a glance over his armored shoulder; locking his feral gaze distinctly on the moving target whom he registered as another operative. With automatic reaction, he aimed the muzzle of his pistol at the puddle of gasoline. He was only granted a small window of opportunity to do something radical. In that moment, he felt his gloved finger coil the trigger back, and he discharged a bullet against the metal back door of the vehicle, sparks of amber flickered into the spilled liquid as ignition released a deafening thunderous sound of an explosion. Vibrations merged beneath his boots as the frozen ground was tremoring in each sonic wake.

Unbothered, the Winter Soldier parted his chilled lips, drawing out vapors of crystallized breath; his enhanced sculpt of muscle stiffened under leather as he thumped heavy steps through the mounts of snow; enclosing his metal palm over her exposed wound. The bullet was lodged in the bruising flesh, as he assessed the damage with a calculating rove of his pale blue eyes. Red dripped from a opened cut on his brow, sliding to his clenched jaw as he tasted the sourness invade his throat.

Each step forced pain to generate into a swollen gauge of flesh, glass was knifing into muscles as he gritted his teeth, slogging his exhausted body against the violent slashes of the freezing rain pelting over the exposed flesh of his right bicep. The sting penetrated through bone as the searing coldness numbed the pain. He wouldn't submit. His body was condition-designed- to evolve from weakness.

For years he was mangled and imprisoned into a cryo pod, he was immune to different levels of torturous possession of HYDRA's will. Ice was potent in his veins. He was remade to feel no warmth of human touch, just the metallic coils of servitude.

The scent of blood always loomed over him. There was no escape from it, they forced him to become immune to the sickening wafts of decay piled at his feet. In a short time of HYDRA's emergence in the shadows;he obtained all directives, extracting life and eliminating obstacles that prevented his masters from their reaching full dominance. For the last seventy years, he had endured the brutal and effective training, dehumanization and coercion, serum infusions -all molding him into a perfected and loyal weapon of enforcing death. He became an equalizer to the balance of power and weakness; preying on the impure that resisted the New Order of HYDRA.

Sometimes he performed with drastic measures to prevent failure, leaving a blood trail in the wake of his wraith-like presence. He was nameless-heartless and only went by the codename that he was enlisted as, the Winter Soldier, an enhanced and distorted version of what had once been an honorable man. Through endurance and sensory manipulation, he accepted that harrowed existence by writing it with the blood of his victims.

Today was no exception. He had received orders to terminate lives that dwelt inside a farm house. A disloyal KGB agent, who defected after isolating a threat that would purge the errors humanity. He was trained to despise life; mostly because of the programmed impulses that corrupted his addled mind. He executed the family without resistance but never expected that the youngest of the children would have survived the assault. It was divergence -monsters were created not to feel and he was one to the core.

There was no escape. He treated days as missions. It was the only way to survive another clashing of a storm of guilt, and he had taken so many lives: whether pulling the trigger or slashing the knife. He killed without mercy, allowed his handlers to turn him into a relentless beast and made him walk into the darkness.

For years he followed their orders as a loyal asset; executing bad and good people with his precision and brutality -he never liked taking a life. His road had ended. He became a ghost, a nameless drifter with only nightmares to claim his depths. It haunted him to feel numbness each time he took the shot, made red rain pour and erased his presence from the scene. He became the undertaker- phantasm- that people feared, but it wasn't his true existence. The Winter Solider was a codename etched on the graves of his victims, purged from identity...memories... emotions...He was a soldier with iron layers and a highly efficient Soviet KBG assassin.

Deep underneath HYDRA's tentacles, he knew there was more to his life than just being a controlled gun with a license to kill. Though he was conditioned not to display human affection, to feel the need of attachment, he carried natural instincts to protect, but the blood on his hands couldn't be cleansed with vows and old promises, not when he drowned into the endless red abyss of sin.

He didn't want people to stare into his steel gray eyes, to see the dark reflections of his tormented and butchered past the faces of so many people that he executed still lingered in the stormy hues of he stared down at the innocent child: the one he was ordered to terminate, he found light in that darkness he walked, and there was a thread of hope that he could become something better than a killer or marksman: he embraced his purpose of defending her.

Holding onto that oath, he used all his methods, skills and intelligence and made the defining choice not to unleash the demon, but to become a dark angel -her elusive protector who could chase the devils when he was called...

With careful ease, he lowered the girl and quickly discarded his leather jacket to serve as the cover over her limp body. It felt right to do, almost like instinct. He gently positioned her head against a mound of snow that his metal hand shoved underneath a tasseled mass of fanned out brown hair. Looking at her innocent face with the absence of reluctance teeming in him, the Soviet assassin felt a small frown etching across his full lips as his icy resolve noticed bluish discoloring on her pale cheeks. She would freeze to death. He needed to react.

"Ditya," he breathed out harsh Russian, his baritone strained from disuse. In a slow effort of his gloved hand, he caressed two fingers under her jaw, feeling for a subtle pulse throb as he eased tentative pressure on her neck. A sense of relief flared in his veins as he felt a bleak and ebbing connection to her strength."Ty menya slyshish'?"

There was no response. The child was motionless under the cautious graces of his metallic touch. With a heave of frustrated breath, he fought against the approach of coldness and tasted the coppery tang of runny blood sliding down his raw throat as he swallowed.

'She's innocent. A life that can't be terminated. I gonna save her.'

Something collided within his riddled depths, he felt a familiar sense harboring him in that undetermined moment as his flesh hand lightened over her chilled skin. He couldn't isolate that piece of humanity as he allowed warmth to resurrect inside of him. It was only for a split second of gracing contact he caressed her disheveled strands before reaching for his knife.

Emitting out a feral growl, his metal fist slashed the ground,and his intent grayish-blue eyes scanned over the mounds of snow. "Where-where is it?"he snarled with a low seethe of frosty breath. The spear-pointed blade glinted against the obstructive whiteness flocking around them.

In a measured heartbeat of pure willpower; his chrome fingers seized the knife with a hammer grip in a cold possessive clenched. Without hesitation steering him away, the Winter Soldier ripped opened her blood soaked shirt; exposing her blemished skin to the nips of cold. He yanked the material clean off in one fierce effortless yank and discarded that raveled piece into the snow.

Roving his hardened, calculating stare, he mentally assessed the gauge deepening in her skin, a shimmer of lead revealed it's slow trek into her trim stomach. Patches of the swelling had increased over the opened entry wound.

Gobs of blood were viciously leaking out, and smearing over her paling skin in a webbing patterned. Breathing out a steady intake of air, the Winter Soldier composed all emotion and harbored all his strength to fight the murderous pulses that seemed to reach influx as red became transfixed in his blurring vision. He needed to focus. The child was fading, and he was resolved to create a medical incision on the swollen flesh.

"If you can hear me, I'm gonna remove this bullet out of you," he whispered in a throaty baritone, feeling a tad indecisive on how to make the cut. One breath he raised the knife; reserving the grip as the blade aimed to pierce. He remembered saving a life before, the distant weaves of memories constructed a gaunt boyish face with shining blue eyes, still unclear for him to register but it was real enough to hold, for a moment.

The desire to save the orphan was becoming relentless, his full lips fused tautly, as he slid the knife's jagged edge over her bruised skin, carefully with precise ease he carved into the muscle until a slit was formed. Muscles coiled with distress, but he maintained a steady-gentle- hand.

As his blade clicked against the bullet from the deepening wound, lines of dark maroon leaked from the exposed area. With a sense of unease, he swallowed thickly, dryness made his throat ache. The stench of blood wafted in the cold air as he regained focus on her fluttering eyelids.

Staring down at that faint glimpse of innocence triggered something inside, that the Winter Soldier's damaged mind couldn't suppress. It was dominant to fight. He was conditioned-tortured- never to feel, it was efficient to remain cold as ice for the mission, but he felt everything unravel in torrents as his blue eyes instantly fell on the child's lax face. In those seconds he watched the blood drip into the snow, his chrome fingers approached her chilled face and threaded against drenched twines of her hair with reverent strokes, almost brotherly. He wanted to savor the moment of grasping on a lifeline of humanity again.

A small hint of a smirk possessed his numbing lips, he felt her heart rate calming as the knife sliced into another layer of skin, plucked out the bullet. He wasted no time, one flick of the blade and it was gone from view. He seemed disturbed by seeds of memories that had been planted in his mind lifetime before he fell into deathless ice. Recollection of a distant time gave him the clear understanding that he performed a deep cut before; a young man wounded with a bullet in his chest. He remembered holding the boy's hand, offering his reverence and warmth as the soldier embraced the sense of peace. He became battle-hardened, fearless and pushed his limits as he carried the wounded youth's across countryside, holding weight firmly on his shoulders, and brought the soldier to a Red Cross tent for medical assistance.

Now, he was holding that burden again, the only difference was that instead of a soldier drenched in mud, his mission came in the form of a little girl. Nevertheless, he felt the same breaches of unshakable trepidation etch over his heart. The acid in his stomach begun to eat through layers as vexatious pulses throbbed into his skull. Like any man in pain, he drew up a forceful breath, allowing tears to freeze over his bristled jaw.

Confused, he glanced back at his metal hand, furrowing his brows, and wondered if what he saw was just an illusion to prevent him from seeing humanity underneath: _maybe I'm still a man instead of a machine?_

A small gasp had awoken his muses, the Winter Soldier ripped off a piece of leather from his jacket, and with an effective charge of instinct applied the strip over the girl's opened wound.

Heat wavered from his flesh hand and merged over her frigid skin, each connected pulse begun to create enough friction to seal off the leakage of blood that soaked through mounds of fallen snow. Unruly tresses of lengthy hair whipped at his wind-bitten face, he frowned deeply as his eyes tracked over the blue tinge coloring her lips. It wasn't a good sign. She needed a better source of warmth.

"Stay with me, malyutka," he urged, breathlessly, biting down at his lip. The rise and fall of her chest served as his only indication that she was still alive, barely, but functional enough for him to bring her to the safe house location that was inscribed in his mind.

The frozen earth vibrated with encroaching underfoot, recognizing the approach of a threat, he removed a pair of inferred goggles from a pouch attached to his uniform. He adjusted them adjusted them quickly over his forehead, hair became caught in the straps as the lens blocked out the distant flecks of moonlight from his gaze. He craned his neck, surveying the vacant area, anticipating intimate danger. His muscles tensed as he curled his gloved fingers over the handle of his recovered knife, hunching his rigid shoulders, he took a predatory stance and waited for the intruder to make his presence known.

The stillness of the moment gave him precise observation, he maintained a steady eye, senses alert to the encroaching presence of the HYDRA operative that became distinctly fixed in his hawkish vision. He measured each boot step, as the shadow hid between the snow top pine.

Gathering up sufficient details for his direct assault, the Winter Soldier straightened to the arches of his poised feet, his own towering shadow obscured the child's listless body. He was challenging the shadows, patiently waiting to become provoked. "Cross my path and I will kill you..." A growl ripped in his throat as he automatically slipped into his termination mode.

With a taut clench of his chrome knuckles, his hand fastened into a fist, blood slid over the sleek plates and landed in the snow. Icy rage engulfed through his veins, addressing his gaze, his blue eyes focused on the rows of trees with disinterest. In a shift of balance, a delirious haze overtook his mind; something had triggered the blazes of sudden currents of static began to filter through the crevices of his mind, creating instability in his flow of thoughts and flashes of distorted faces, heart rates lines on EKG machine, it was the chimeras of his past anguish and torturous presence of nightmares consumed every fiber of his body.

'Focus on the mission.'

Memories started to overlap, inorganic, malicious voices of lifeless husks droned in his pounding ears. It had forced his mind to shut down, almost like a reset program. He struggled through the systemic tortures and the mindless abuse he had faced in a red lit room consisting of four cement walls, steel restraints bolted to the ground, and a bucket of murky water: the Red Room. The labyrinthine prison where the strengths of humanity had been butchered and reattached by threads for cruel handlers to pull as strings: hell on earth.

Screeching out feral cries for release, he lost all balance his footing and crashed to the ground, knees absorbed the shock of weight hitting frozen earth, hs hands encompassed over his ears, trying to block out the tantalizing noises echoing back to his mercy pleas.

His bones started to jostle in the wake of distress and his heart throbbed as he thrashed wildly as red markers from sniper rifles painted his armored chest with dots. He was slipping back into the void, not realizing at the microchip planted in his infrared goggles that caused him to reenter back into a stage of a mind-numbing relapse. He was literally shutting down.

As world spun around him into a darkening vortex of red; his movements became erratic, unstable and ferocious. He crawled on his stomach, breath choked out his lungs and his forehead was pulsing. Screams turned up ragged and sharpened with cries of utter agony; sweat blinded his vision and dampened strands fell over his babbling lips. He was entering back into submission, the Sleeper Agent protocol had been activated...his mind was on the brink of turning into mush.

"Please...She's gonna to die out here..." He gawked out slurring pleas in Russian."Ona sobirayetsya umeret' zdes'."

His harsh screams turned up ragged and sharpened with cries of utter agony; sweat blinded his vision and dampened strands of messy hair fell over his babbling lips. He was submerging back into a dormant state, the Sleeper Agent protocol had been activated...his mind was on the brink of turning into mush.

Something foreign had invaded his body, making him felt like his insides were dissolving, it was a cruel and familiar sensation. Each surge of energy had permeated through his bones, his blood and internal organs. He tried to push his weight close to her, but his muscles underneath his jacket recoiled in pain; he wanted to protect her. He wanted to trust in himself again.

His dimming gaze shifted to the child, and he reached to grab her tiny hand,but the amalgamated, invasive fragments of his wrecked mind were growing spastic. His pants of breath were laced with heavy, choking moans and his heart rate was increasing as the organ pounded against his chest with jackhammer force; dismissing all the numbness that entrapped his body, the Winter Soldier managed to clasp his cold metal fingers around her pulsing wrist, refusing to break that line of their connection as surges of pain ravaged through his skull.

In those seconds of falling into a void of submission, as his muscles went slack, he caught a blurry glimpse of tactical boots crunching fervently through mounds of snow and then the figure halted with one pause of his footing before of the unconscious child.

The intruding operative was medium height, his built solid with muscle and he was garbed in black combat gear, armed and poised to deliver a killing strike. Feeling the admission of dominance over the situation, the operative's movements stilled, as he narrowed his wolfish brown eyes and collectively absorbed darkness as he locked onto the Winter Soldier.

Shaking his head with a semblance of unbidden disgust, the operative pressed the com link wedged in his ear, "Sir, I found the asset. The device worked just enough to shut him down. He has taken out three of our agents and he's not alone." He paused in his snide words and stared ruefully down at the unconscious child, as a wicked gleam twisted in his dark eyes, and so did her reflection.

"It appears that your loyal lap dog as found the little brat as you predicted, looks like she's wounded, do you want me to end her pain?" He digressed gruffly, his lips pulled into a roguish smirk as if he thirsted to catch a whiff of spilled blood. He aimed his automatic rifle directly at the girl's head. His stiff -trigger- finger slowly pushed back against the gun's hammer, waiting to release the bullet, not fully aware that he was evoking a murderous glare of HYDRA's living nightmare. "Just give me the order for the capture or execution, sir…"


	3. Chapter 3

**{3}**

"…Capture…"

The echoes of the HYDRA operative's brutal compromise triggered a defensive instinct in his veins, a lucid sense that he recalled harboring in a distant life. Flashes of distorted imagery created a studious illusion of a young blond haired boy, gaunt and ailing no density of muscle growth. He remembered sitting near the sloping edge of a twin spring mattress, holding the boy's frail hand with an urgent grip as the blast coldness of the winter night embraced them.

_'Everythin' gonna be fine, you're a tough little guy, nothin' is gonna drag you down...'_ Those words he couldn't voice back, something was barricading his sentiments. He only felt each retention suppressing an erratic pulse of rage margining within his depths.

_...Homecoming..._

For an inexplicit moment of voracious impulse, the Winter Soldier felt paralysis receding as his senses awakened to the metallic and charred stench wafting over the fresh snow capped terrain; a potent reminder of the deaths that ensued. A dark figure reflected in the intent glacial pools of his eyes. Regaining a level of clarity, he trained his focus on the brutish American operative standing above him. A sheen of black metal revealed the automatic poised in Rumlow's narrowed clutch. It was a display of false restraint. Bullets hadn't been discharged out of the weapon's nozzle and new transmissions were being received, which gave him a definite recognition that the orphan was still alive.

Red. He was staring down at her blood smearing the white ground, his chrome fist clenched reactively against the rage enveloping him, it was unnatural to feel attachment towards an innocent life, his hard muscles kinked under his uniform when the rawness of an abyssal growl arose from his depths. He fought against the corruptive force of the trigger words encoded into his mind, trying to halt the control through volumes of static. Everything haze into the monochromes of red...He watched as the girl stirred underneath his jacket, her temperature was decreasing, he recognized the signs of her entering the first stage of hypothermia.

As his limbs regained stability, all the Winter Soldier stared at was the gun. One click of the recoiling hammer would end the mission. A brazen sense overtook him, a source of light that steered him away from HYDRA's control as he awakened. Every thought merged back to the girl, and the reason of her prime importance to his masters. The pressure in his skull diminished as his chrome hand lifted, thoughts were traversing as snow dusted over his roguish chestnut tresses before he realized that he was the child's only wall of defense against the bullets aimed to pierce into her vulnerable heart.

_...Freight Car..._

A warm caress graced his real hand, a phantom touch of his conscience, that steered him back to the little girl depending on him. A flash assaulted his mind as deformities of shattered memories collected into a dominant image of a muscular soldier with blond hair His body emboldened with the colors of America, carrying a gleaming shield through the darkness weaving around him_._

_'I've never known you to quit a fight, Buck...'_

Frosted breath solidified in his throat, he emerged back to reality, leveling a feral glare of steel-blue at the faint glow of firelight. His collective emotions harbored no conviction as he blinked vacantly and with a slow motion of his head; he exuded a murderous glint at Rumlow's finger tracing over the trigger of his assault rifle, long disheveled strands hung over his lips, as he increasingly watched Rumlow's sadistic resolve back to the girl.

The clarification to execute the transmitted order that buzzed in Rumlow's ear. A miasma of blood stroked over his nose as his taut lips pulled into a deleterious grin, exposing his warped amusement to exact voluntary harm on an innocent life. His thoughts savored in the macabre imagery of fresh crimson painted over the white frozen ground, seeping from his target's leaden body.

As Rumlow's dark eyes glowed with flares of black, the Winter Soldier trained his own penetration onto the gun, challenging the logic that had been implanted to evolve his destructive single thought divided the drones of static as he chose to attain humanity over compliance and flexed his metallic fingers into a solid fist. Such delivery of raw strength was effectively utilized to protect weakness. He was prepared to oppose the authority that grounded his body to submit, he had to become the girl's resistance. How could he restrict his merciless tactics and save her life? He needed an outlet to give him a vital reason to defect from his prearranged directive.

"Sir," Rumlow grumbled with a fuse of fretfulness ebbing through his veins. He narrowed a ravenous stare at the unconscious child while pressing his finger over his comlink. He waited to receive the command from his superior. A slight curl of his lips revealed the confirmation of his new orders. His gaze sliced through obscurity and his shoulders rolled back to size his posture into an intimating stance. "Understood."

Feeling a relentless pull of dread against his tensed heart, instincts ripped through him, summoning all reservations of defiance, the Winter Soldier locked his icy azure eyes intensely on the exposed neck of the mercenary, holding no regard to inflict the right measure of harm, as the girl's life hung on a verge of termination. It took a subtle moment of precise calculation to devise his engaging attack.

Brandishing his knife into coils of his metal fingers his stare went depthless retracting no light as his stoic demeanor morphed soulless to the obstructor before him. A vicious siege repossessed his mind, as he blocked out the bone-impaling screams of his retired victims and granted the blemish of red to assail the aggressive hold as the clear azure of his eyes blackened to the core. Through a division of transmuting emotions, he used that one fragment of memory to anchor against the intense storm. With slow, measured ease, his abdomen crunched under Kevlar, freeing a sculpt of muscles from as he stabled his height; giving Rumlow a false sense that he was stalling.

With slow measured ease, his abdomen crunched under Kevlar, freeing a sculpt of muscles from as he stabled his height; giving Rumlow a false sense that he was stalling.

Once he felt unsettled by the provoking threat, his chrome knuckles involuntarily scraped over mounds of the accumulated snow; displaying the cold fury that couldn't be reckoned with. He was trained to remain impassive, a pulse vibrating through his bones, like a droning volumes of a reactivated machine. That's all he was existed to be: a machine programmed to execute commands and destroy obstructions -targets-deviants. He walked through shadows as a ghost, nameless and barren from spirit. His eyes never blinked when he pulled the trigger, stance never faltered. He was modified to feel the emptiness that deleted phantomous echoes of humanity.

After reclaiming a sense of identity to match his heartbeat , the Winter Soldier craned his neck and settled a deadened glance at the shorter operative advancing towards him. The HYDRA agent was a sleeper, recruited by his handlers to shadow him during extraction missions. Brock Rumlow, a brash Italian mercenary who had a blood thirst; he enjoyed torturing victims through methods of interrogation and relished at their submissive pleas; but he wasn't a true monster, he didn't embody the mantle of dread that the Soldier wore or the icy grasp of death that wielded in the assassin's hand; he was merely an observer who could never pierce through the hearts of weakness like a knife.

The Winter Soldier had been surgically remade to serve HYDRA a lethal sentinel and controlled instrument: a frozen gun tangled in strings.

As rage brimmed in his eyes, the Winter Soldier made his effort retake his limited dominance over Rumlow. His hawkish gaze was intent with a shadowed and possessive glint, preparing to deliver a killing strike on his standing violator. In a slight balance of disciplined movement, the grinding of alloy plates of the arm made the presence of his menace known to Rumlow's ears, an unwavering response of instinct became imitate in his glacial eyes in the seconds the audacious operative aligned the pistol at him, evoking a challenging onslaught.

He exchanged a fleeting glance back at the girl, color was decreasing in her face, almost frosted as blood was draining at an unsteady pace. He needed to remove her from the coldness, bring her to a safe house he recalled being situated during a recon mission. Her survival was necessary to preserve.

Rumlow seemed enthralled by the concept of gaining succession, and so it became dual of skill that both of them posed as equal forces of brutality, never faltering to surrender their mission. "Ona moya (She is mine...)" The Winter Soldier declared in a raw snarl and the boyish fullness of his lips sealed into a hardened scowl as avid sweat polished his heated skin. Protectively, he shielded the girl with his flesh arm, shadowing her pale skin, never taking his eyes off Rumlow's gun.

He isolated the bestial impulse to crack Rumlow's skull open. His heartbeat stilled as he tested the mercenary's humanity. "YA budu derzhat' yeye v zhivykh ... Udalit' sebya ili ya ub'yu tebya."

"You think a little threat is gonna to scare me, Winter," Rumlow derided with a cockiness teeming in his gruff voice, barely noticing the shift of unhinged emotion rippling in the Winter Soldier's rebellious gaze. He didn't need to decipher that something was obstructing the assassin's mind, his whole demeanor changed into a fractured semblance of reserved calamity.

He needed to drag the subservient asset back into submission, he taunted at the Winter Soldier, exhibiting livid contempt without annexing his desire to snare the child into his own clutches. She was unprepared for the horrors that awaited to greet her inside the asylums of HYDRA. "Don't tell me that you're becoming defective because of the little brat?" he vexed.

Rage possessed him to the brim, cooling in his blood. "I was given orders to finish the directive," the Winter Soldier dismissed with a slight rasp of nonchalance edging in his masked baritone, almost conveying it naturally. With a hard clenched etching in his chiseled jaw, he leveled his a pulsating, feral gaze effectively at his unreasoning handler. All resistance ebbed away, one of his chrome fingers pointed on the child, while the intensity of his blue irises never reflected empathy. He felt remorse scraping over his heart, evoking a manifestation of pained rage. What he was doing was defying orders, proving to himself that he still had light in his soul. "The girl needs medical attention." His words carried rebellion. "She's gonna lose more blood."

Sensing the defiance against the cognitive programming, Rumlow stomped his boots into with an imposing approach with the limited control of precision, his stoic demeanor shifted with a look of menace, dark eyes burning like smoky embers as he clenched his teeth and grabbed a fistful of messy hair, yanking the Winter Soldier's head with a bone crackling jolt. Listening to the yelping grasps, he wielded his knife into a reserved stab, and just grazed the pulsing vein of his captive's throat. "The brat's gonna lose a hell of a lot more when the scalpel digs deep."

A slow burn of acid rose up his throat, and the Winter Soldier's frosted glare trained at the operative, dismissing all restraint as instincts steered him to accept a returning pulse of warranted tolerance. With an alarming thrust of his metal hand, he seized Rumlow's unguarded arm; tearing stitched material with a flash of his brutal strength. He wouldn't relent, his steeled blue eyes reflected a lurid blaze as his chrome fingers gripped harder onto the scuff of leather.

"What is your mission?" he dismissed, evidently concern for the girl's life. An enraged snarl ripped from his throat, he was losing his restraint and a gush of clotting blood that leaked from his opened wound confirmed that his body was on the brink of collapsing. Rumlow acted indifferent to reveal the information, he easily brushed off the Soldier's raging the demands."Tell me!"

"You're not getting a word out of me, Winter," Rumlow smirked tersely, amused by the baneful and venting assassin's display of unobstructed sentiment. Abruptly, he glared up with a daring glint, never losing his grip on the pistol, nor did he reveal a falter in his impassive stare as the iced clutch of the Winter Soldier's bionic hand, feeling it move on encompassing accord as the metallic fingers threatened to squeeze the bones of his captive wrist out of joint.

It felt like a clasp of inspired dread, clotting up his veins. Precision couldn't be outmatched. In one the wake of the Winter Soldier's unleashed fury, his bones were dislocated. "Son-of-a-bitch," he swore irritably. Strength ceased to exist in his arm, as pressure grew unbearable. His vision became infected with feverish haze. It was enough to make his stomach churn. In a slow recoil of ungrounded footing, his arm was freed.

There was no chance of succession tonight-not without his fleet of operatives that were on the verge of intercepting his position. He needed a distraction. Sweat dampened his spiked hairline, and his fingers betrayed their steadiness. He purposely dropped the pistol into a mound of snow collecting at his boots. It was a false illusion to deem a sense of negotiation.

"Whoa..." Rumlow issued with a calm breath, bracing his hands up in a defensive stance under the Soldier's imposing shadow. His dark eyes hardened into a scornful glare, exposing his fiery rage. The Winter Soldier's deadened gaze bore into his skull like sharpened ice, unwavering and slicing into his layers. "My orders are not to harm the injured brat. It's extraction..." He conveyed valid assurance that the child wouldn't become a victim of his nefarious methods. "Not termination."

Those words seemed to elicit an involuntary reaction, without displaying evidence of a warning, the assissasn's alloy hand dove into the snow to retrieve the discarded weapon, his right arm hung uselessly limp at his side, as the Winter Soldier skillfully aligned the nozzle of the gun clutched in his bionic fist at Rumlow's vested chest.

The next few moments were a blur, three rounds were discharged as the Glock's hammer recoiled with a thunderous blast lighting up the shadowed area, but Rumlow maintained balance against the warning shots arriving at his feet. Empathy was used to shackle down his murderous intent, the Soldier drawled, his voice awash with a detectable Brooklyn accent. Rumlow registered the compromising shift, and he sneered in return."You're not gonna take her."

Cursing, Rumlow nauseated, removed a flare stick from his pouch, and swiped over a steel casing of bullets, igniting a red spark. "On my signal," he jabbed a finger into his earpiece and relayed an order back to his team. "Light up the sky.

Hearing the command being asserted, the Winter Soldier emitted a defiant growl, viciously throwing the emptied Glock against the tree, dismantling the pieces. He needed to remove the operative and resort to using his bare hands as weapons and clear away from the opened ridge before the armored fleet of HYDRA soldiers arrived. He glanced back at the girl, keenly exacting all focus on the smear of blood pouring from covered wound in her stomach. He attempted to reach down to her.

Within seconds of his ceaseless effort to grasp the child's limp hand, crimson spires pierced through the haze of falling sleet, reflecting in his blurring eyes. A storm of operatives moved in sync to their commander's orders, preparing to engage with a dosage of tranquilizers at the Winter Soldier. "Stand down, Soldier," the chorus of an intent threat invoked the usage of his mind to regress back to his menacing tactics. He was HYDRA's creation of resurrection, a merciless enforcer of death and fear: he could trounce and wash the frozen ground with their blood without a flash of conviction in his penetrating eyes.

Rumlow noticed a ripple of opposing defiance in the depthless blue glaring him down. It was a turbulent storm within a balance of waging emotions. HYDRA assimilated that behavior and stripped him down to contain only a voice of obedience. The mercenary's lips curled into a disgusted sneer, as he measured a step towards the unconscious girl, shadowing over her pale skin, barely demonstrating restraint in his stance. As he breathed in the frigid air, he mimicked a reckless kick near to the child's head. His boots crunched with disturbing weight; threating to stomp on her fanned out hair before recoiling away."You want this dying brat to live, then you will remain grounded, Soldier."

Shifting an unhurried glance at the dark shapes forming at a hilltop, the Winter Soldier acutely listened to Rumlow's erroneous words and growing in contempt that he sensed in the mercenary's lewd tone; if he surrendered to the resistance of his programming, the girl would suffer. Her innocence was the only anchor that recalled a piece of his soul that hadn't been gauged out by HYDRA's corruption. The sight of death had met them in the crossfire. Parting his full lips, he drew out a chilling rasp and delivered one submissive answer with a gravelly timbre edging against his Russian voice, "ya podchinyayus'"

In that mere second of accepting his rectified choice, a faint whimper beckoned his luminous blue eyes stray back to the child awakening before them. Rumlow smirked darkly, preparing to snatch her, but the Winter Soldier countered fast, jabbing his metallic elbow full force into his aggressor's kneecap; a yelp confirmed a fracture of bone, as he seized the limb with clasping pressure, striving against the unquenchable thirst to rip the leg off, as the impulse was growing rancid to dismiss. "On a moya missiya," he snarled, fiercely, gnashing his teeth, embracing the sense of bleak determination raking through his body.

Rumlow remained stagnant, obvious to the pain that seeded in his bruising calf, he could feel traction gaining in his snared leg, muscle and bone tensed under coils of metal:there was no pulsation of relief. He gave into the pressure and stumbled off balance, landing into snow with a thud but the Winter Soldier never ceased to deliver more pain with his capable skill; in a blur of red haze, the weight of his body was being crushed as the long-haired assassin saddled over his waist before he could jerk movement, and through darkened splotches of his diminished vision, all he saw was the metal hand reaching down to claim his throat.

"I'm gonna make sure you're mind goes into a blender for this..." Rumlow taunted in a slurring gurgle, and then, he spat out watery drops of red, watching specks of his blood land over the Winter Soldier's lips. The thumping of heavy boots vibrated underneath them."We're gonna make sure you ride the lightning tonight," he chuckled toothy, as he peered at the girl. "And just because you pissed me off, I'll make her watch."

"I don't think so," the assassin rasped with a vicious seethe, thrusting his metal hand up to ram his knuckles into Rumlow's skull. His rampant senses were diverted by the feverish haze obstructing his intent resolve; he couldn't see a dart slicing into the air until the needle pierced the exposed skin of his neck. With the release of an enraged snarl and rash attempt, he quickly yanked the dart out of his throbbing vein and felt a rush of the serum.

"No!" he screeched, clawing at the snow as Rumlow shoved him off; gobs of blood drained out from his wound, heavily. He couldn't focus against the numbness overtaking his muscles, the merging of sedative was effective. Tactical boots of the encroaching operatives dragged over whiteness. A breath later his subdued body was being hoisted up.

When he cast a dismal stare onto the girl reeling back to slow consciousness, before offering them no success of their capture; he thrashed violently under the weight of gloved hands bracing over his chest, with the last vestiges of fleeting strength that he still possessed. With insidious and lethal calculation, he twisted hard flesh arms out of shoulder sockets and forced a leg back, listening to bones snapping out of joint against the jarring force of his ramming boot.

The retreating operative collapsed breathless, nursing the broken leg as he gave the others no glimpse of mercy reflected in his searing blue orbs. Instincts drove him to a destructive course of unparalleled action as he listened to piercing howls erupting from their depths, he was immobilizing all of them within seconds of reclaiming his strength that enforced him to unleash his retaliation and he didn't relent back._ These bastards deserve nothing less than pain..._

Taking a moment to dwell on his defying choice, the Winter Soldier tasted blood coating over his lips, a line ran down his neck and soaked into the leather of his jacket's collar. It only amplified his will to remove the target from HYDRA's sight. In slow and automatic effort, he crouched low, instilling a sense of humanity as his chrome hand caressed over the child's limp arm.

The connection of his urgent touch ignited a spark of electricity, and his fingers clasped in unison, threading soft and tentative strokes through her dark strands, it satisfied him long enough to accept the existence of a brotherly command that breached the surface of his conditioned programming.

"What are you gonna do now?" Rumlow teased harshly, poising his weight off the damaged knee. A fleet of stealth agents besieged the area, red flicks of scope lights dotted over them as the resounding clicks of automatics broke the silence. He smirked wickedly, licking his bruised lips and cocked his head up, expectingly looking at his firing squad. "Now, we make this hard or easy, but since you're gonna drop, it's kinda pointless to run, given that you've been dosed up good, Winter."

The Winter Soldier conveyed no reluctance in his unwavering gaze, he lifted the girl's weightless body, and curved his arm just enough for her head to rest against his chest, muscles went solid underneath torn kevlar as his sluggish paces tottered forward; allowing the relentless slashing of cold air to etch into his bristled cheeks, numbing though the clenched muscle of his heavy jaw. The ceaseless and insatiable desire to shield her was all he felt. It was only an interlude of their connection. Blood from his uncovered wound outlined over plated rivets of his metallic arm and became a glaze on his knuckles with a slick trek. He was reaching exhaustion, darkness edged his mind as his body resisted to drop as he strained to carry momentum onward until his grayish azure eyes trained vividly on flashes of red aimed to shoot him down.

"Immobilize..."

"You're my mission," he avowed to her in a crooning voice, breath was choking out of him. A concussion of pain induced his body to deny strength, his dimming eyes narrowly stared at her as the components of the sedative flooded through him. Refusing to abandoned her against the masses of distortion, grounded him with a semblance of hope. Believing that salvation was possible to grasp, he embraced her close with an unquenchable need to restore humanity and sacrificed his thermic warmth to give her a chance to live. Unbeknownst to his captors, he glanced blearily down at her angelic and serene face one last time, knowing that when she awoke he would be just a tangible memory for them to erase away.

After a few more barbs succeeded prick into his skin, he surrendered to gravity, sinking to his knees. Blood roared in his ear as the clashing forces of red tentacles funneled violently into his butchered soul, dragging him further into the emptiness of shadowy abyss, but he never let her go.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

"Where is she?" The Winter Soldier gnashed his teeth, streaks of dark maroon stained over the ivory white. He shot at dangerous glower at the pale faced, timid scientist before him, holding a syringe filled with a yellowish tinged, and experimental substance.

He tried to shift against the cold metal penetrating into his throbbing bones; his bare, chiseled torso slacked with feverish sweat and his steely blue eyes grew into darkened color of gun metal gray. He focused his intent stare at the two American operatives regally guarding the metal doors, with automatic rifles clutched in their half-gloved hands.

He wanted to escape, to rip off the leather straps pinned over his blemished skin and find the little girl. His heated blood pumping faster in his veins with a destructive flood of adrenaline that made his flesh and blood fingers curl into a constricting fist.

He emitted a low, abrasive growl up his throat and shot a murderous glower with an unsavory grimace at one of the operatives' way.

"The girl is safe," the scientist answered with uneven pitch of breath and he stifled a sharp gasp at the severe intensity burning into the assassin's blue eyes. He gulped down a knot of fear sticking the walls of his throat, and averted his brown eyes away from the unblinking stare of HYDRA's efficient and obedient asset.

"She hasn't woke up, but one of my colleagues as able to stitch up her wounds and inject antibiotics into her in case her blood developed an infection." He added with his mouth agape and chanced himself to look at the dark skinned operative nodding at him with a silence gesture of his hand pointing at the tranquilizer gun resting on the medical cart.

The assassin flexed his powerful jaw, and parted his lips just enough to show his jagged canines. He slowly narrowed his vibrant blue eyes to the floor.

"I want to see her." he whispered in a broken voice, wincing slightly at the metallic tang of blood dripping from the bruised corner of his full lips.

He swallowed thickly, keeping himself submissive to his handlers; and then he lifted his steady gaze on the scientist.

The depth of his pain filled in his feverish eyes. He remained in a stoic state of mind while his thoughts addled, staring utterly blank at the syringe and he spoke once more in strained pitch of a broken voice, "The girl needs me with be her. She is my mission." he drifted, feeling tears wax over his peripherals. "My mission..."

"The little brat, your friend," he taunted back. " She belongs to HYDRA now and your an ineffective attack mutt," The spiteful operative circled to his right. He snorted out with a tart voice of debased apathy, and curled his lips into a snug and wolfish smirk as his finger taunted lightly over the trigger of his armed weapon.

The Winter Soldier gaped at him with enraged eyes, on the monitor's screens it displayed a relative increase of his pulse rate. He fumed out his nostrils, and gritted his back teeth, while the other man stood in front of him with an ignorant grin stretched cross his smooth features.

"The high director will do as he pleases with her, and you will stay in your place. Maybe he will keep as his little pet." he jeered back, no emotion in his voice.

The restrained soldier listened to the vile words while growling in contempt. Rage nudged against his bones, and the metal alloy plates in his bionic arm writhed as the screeching and hissing noises of cybernetic mastery threatened to lunged at the operative. Before he could unleash his anger, and paint the walls red with the blood of his aggressors, the steel doors flung open and an aging man with copper-reddish hair strode inside the room. He walked over to the with haughty steps as he gave a nod for the operatives clearance to disengage from the assault. .

"Rumlow," he spoke to the operative in firm and direct voice. "Step away from him."

Hearing his order, the American agent nodded at his commander's orders, and did a sidestep back to his previous post. The man dressed in a pristine business suit moved closer to the electronic chair, and wheeled over a cushioned stool as he sat down and faced the Winter Soldier. "I understand that you encountered a small child on your last mission."

He pursed his withered lips tightly. giving the silent asset a few displeasing looks of scrutiny before he continued, "You killed three of my best men to escape with this child. We know that you are starting to have your compliance returned and this girl is responsible for your disobedience."

He shook his head, and reached out a hand, and tugged violently on the disheveled strands of the young man's hair. He scowled an ugly scowl, and narrowed his dark blue eyes at the soldier."You know the cost if you disobey your orders. I don't want you to receive pain, but if it's the only alternative to keep you in line."

The soldier swallowed hard as he thought, he unfastened his lips, "What's going to happen to her?" he asked in a weakened tone, ignoring the invasive voice of his superior. "Tell me that you will allow her to live?'

"The girl will live and become trained under my guidance. Her bloodline will help reshape this diseased world." he smirked, clasping his hand around the soldier's neck, squeezing hard against the pulse point. "She will become one of HYDRA's daughters who will obey every command programmed into her. It's better to corrupt the mind at a young age. Her mind is full of torment because of the trauma of her families death, but it's nothing that can't become erased and reinvented with a push of a switch." He roved his eyes over to the agents, who smirked cheekily at his cruel words. "Don't worry, I make sure it's quick and painless for her."

As he listened to the merciless ting in the director's voice, the soldier felt his breath hitch against his chest and painful splitting throb was now hammering into his skull. The force of his aggression pushing the metal shackles bolted down against his wrists slightly up.

His eyes grew livid, and teeth clenched as he teethed out pants of anger, and managed to break out of a shackle. He shot his captor a hard glare, before pushing the older man off the stool with a violent thrash of his metal arm.

"NO!" he screamed with an ear-shattering pitch, and felt tears burn in his eyes. "You will never touch her." he issued out a gravelly warning, and ripped the other restraint clean off the chair, throwing it to the operative's, and made them duck as the metal piece missed Rumlow's head by an inch.

In a hostile twist of his metal arm, he flipped himself out of the chair, smacking his combat boots on a table, and glared dangerously at the director rubbing his right arm. He pounced on his target, yanking him up with the collar, and holding a few inches off the floor with his stiffened metallic arm.

"Order your men to lower their guns, or I will break your neck." His metal fingers dug into reddish, sweaty skin. "They make move. They die." he snarled with disgust and cold fury burning in his molten blue eyes.

He moved the bones underneath flesh with his tightening knuckles. Humanity was beginning its reemergence in his body. He felt everything as tears rolled down his temples, and over the edges of his scowling lips.

The director was calm and managed to give him a short nod, signaling Agent Brock Rumlow and his bulky sized partner Jack Rollins who had his gun readied at the raised of his hand.

"If you want to see her, soldier. You have my clearance. Don't make a mistake that you will regret...Prove that you're a man and not a calibrated weapon with wires for a brain." He winced, struggling against the Winter Soldier's death grip. "Prove to her that you've had your emotions compromised. Release me, soldier. That's an order."

Hearing the command, he lowered his arm by instinct and loyalty, and he settled the director gently down to the floor. He withdrew a step back, and lowered his head before he sent a glare to Rumlow.

"Bring me to her," he growled, pointing a metal finger at the door.

"Relax, soldier." the director spoke with stern tone, rubbing his neck. He stiffened to his regal posture, watching the asset heaving out feverish breaths. "You will see your friend, I assure you, but you must now that she has been severely wounded and she is fighting a high fever. If she doesn't receive the proper antibiotics she will not survive within the twenty-hour period of infusion."

The Winter Soldier turned his head, strands of his brown hair fell into his eyes as he shot the scientist with glaring blue daggers. "You lied to me." he stormed out a vicious growl, clenching his metal hand. Rumlow tried to set a stun gun onto him, but he was fast and lunged at his target, pulling him closer to his sweaty chest before slamming him into the wall with bone shattering force.

"YOU LIED TO ME!" he screamed out, making the man trembling at his thunderous voice. He threatened to crush the man's sagging windpipe. "You told me that she was safe. I will kill you." He glowered darkly, rising the scientist and ramming his back into a glass observation window. "I want her safe."

"Release your hold on him, soldier." Rumlow chimed out with a cocky smirk twisting over his lips, marking the light of his teaser weapon point red on the assassin's back. He stepped closer, not taking his brown eyes off the other man. "There's been a misunderstanding. You want to see the little brat, then let him go."

Growling against his clamped teeth, the Winter Soldier quickly dropped his grip on the shivering man, ignoring his authoritative handlers, as he bolted to the doors. He tried to reach for the metal handle, until a high voltage shock zapped through his body causing his muscles to jerk in hurting pain as he lost his footing and collided with the cement floor.

The director lifted his thumb off a small USB sized device clutched his hand, and shook his head in disappointing manner as he issued out a clear order,"Bring him to the girl. It's better to give our asset an ounce of humility before we take everything away from him once again."

He looked at his agents with coldness etched over his sadistic, wrinkled features. "After all, gentlemen, he will be sharing a cold future with her."

He turned and looked at the scientist with an unemphatic stare as he removed a sidearm revolver, and fired a round into the man's chest. Flexing his jaw, he listened to the body drop within a second before looking at his short agent. "I want this mess cleaned up before we hook the girl to the machine. No mistakes."

Rumlow returned with a short nod. He thumped his heavy boots closer to the unconscious assassin. Hegrabbed the laden arms with his gloved hands as Rollins lifted up legs by the ankles and hauled out him of the chamber while allowing the metal hand to scrape against the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Coldness sliced further inside her rigid bones; everything was numb-even her blood. Straining to breathe harder as she could manage, the girl traversed her blearily gaze around the room of medieval decor. The crackles of fire lulled her body to ease as wave of comfort lapped over her; saturating her churning blood with heat. The following moment that seized her, bounded her into the darkness of a looming presence, but she condemned to the twisting knots of pain erupting within her small frame strapped into a wooden chair, in front of a stone fireplace.

Her wrists twisted underneath metal shackles locked over her chest, yanking and feeling her muscles protest in the chains.

There was glossy coating of tears masking over the beautiful caramel of her irises; shivering and timid she parted her lips, opening her throat up, but she was too weak to speak. All the escaped from her vocals was a muffled cry that intermingled with weakening breath.

Flinching a response to the strange touch coiling over her skin, she dared her female captor a timid glance. She tried to protest against the coldness encasing over her skin. Long fingers caught the strands of her dark mahogany hair, threading each piece in between the wove of her fingers.

The woman was tall, invasive and almost wore the semblance of a witch over her pale sculpted face. Emerald green dyed hair fastened into a thick braid touching her lower back, and muscular frame clothed in a military ebony uniform with shiny golden buttons on the leather collar of her jacket.

It took only a mere second to feel the tension bubbling in her veins as she stared at a pair of steel scissors gleaming in the shafts of light...only a moment to grasp the honorific tool clutched in the woman's hand. The serrated blades were only inches from the clusters of her beautiful hair, the only remainder of her mother.

"This form of insult is a collected disease and must become sliced off to make you pure." The woman spoke with a disgusted hiss ragging up her throat, degrading the child's wounded soul with vile words rolling from the tip of her tongue."You will become a new daughter of our family. Beautiful and loyal to every wish your father expects you to grant."

There was no time to scream. She pushed back against the chair, struggling to fight, but the jerking quarrel ended when the scissors opened and snipped her hair. She watched the tresses fall to the floor.

She was butchered.

Gloved fingers kept on collecting the strands, cutting the thickness as vacant green eyes matched the sadistic grin etched over the woman's full lips.

The girl twitched in the chair, breaking her lips apart, and releasing faint cries as piece by piece her appearance changed.

It wasn't until the older female withdrew a step back, and gazed at her work with prideful gleam sparking in her darkened eyes.

The female captor slowly raked a serpentine gaze over the child, admiring the new hair style, shoulder length hair that draped over her pale, gawky cheeks, disheveled and marred into the in the mien of a dehumanized slave for HYDRA.

She was shattered.

Crying with every tear she could muster, the child tore her head away to the side, feeling the shortened locks slash over her cheeks. The new feeling she was experiencing was so hard for her small form to retract too in a short period of time. The bond of the substance the doctors injected her with became grease sticking over the bones of her ribs and caking ooze over her pounding heart.

"Your rite of induction will commence once you become purified with humanity's cancer that infects this world."

"Where is my friend?' the girl asked admitting out a breath, her eyes closing into slits. Fragments of memory struck her mind of extremely piercing eyes,winter azure sky and a metal hand pressing against her stomach wound. A hollow sound escaped from her throat. "I want my friend." she demanded in a cracking tone.

"You only get what you receive, princess." The woman growled in her real voice of German with ting of sordid vehemence ghosting over her scowling lips.

She grabbed the girl's chin, inclining her to meet her villainous stare, and dug her polished nails into ashen skin. She stared intently, watching her captive's expression flatten into a semblance of fear.

"The Winter soldier isn't your friend. He is a soulless machine. He is not a human." She intoned scraping her index finger over the girl's curved jaw line. "You may treat him as your pet...Or a loyal dog, but he is below our ranks. He doesn't deserve a brat's compassion."

Trembling, suddenly feeling the hammering pulse against her skull, the girl clenched her eyes shut beckoning her courage. "Remember him saving me in the snow," she said in a low pitch of a rattled voice.

"HYDRA saved you from a bitterness of death instead of leaving you to freeze out in the cold. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

The woman with green hair was making her scared, apprehensive even. She felt every fiber in her body scream in pain when the hand of her merciless tormentor pressed hard against her bandaged mid-section, applying pressure over the gunshot wound, and making her shed away more tears.

With her body wrapped in chains, her muffled and broken voice as intermix of confusion. "When can I see my friend?" she asked in mere whisper, feeling her heart reach an impasse against her bruised chest.

The woman just laughed cruel and spiteful at the little voice. "Open your eyes and I will tell you."

She opened her eyes, shuddering under the intense glower as if she had been accused for a crime. "Please, can you let me see him?" she pleaded

"How many hours have you slept?"

Shifting her intent focus to the embers lighting over the charred logs in the fireplace, she was obviously avoiding the deaden stare of the witch.,Showing her inward resistance, she narrowed her brown eyes to where her trim stomach covered with cotton gauze, gazing at the blood stains leaking through the layers and bruise darkening over her small right hand. The marks left by tubes, a cut etched in the skin over her forearm where a needle must have punctured when a substance had saturated her blood in greasy hold of toxic poison.

A low growl emitted from the woman's throat, "You're not looking at me, princess. How many?"

"I don't know." she answered in a frantic tone, her brown eyes scanned acutely over the floor. "Where's my mommy's locket?" she asked, feeling the muscles in her chest stiffen against the drumming heart beat. Her expression morphed into a distraught and abashed look. She fought against the urge of impending vomit rising up the swollen walls of her throat. She shook her head and muddled out incoherent words that soon turned into a blood churning scream of dolor. "Please...I don't want to lose it."

"You will get it back once you are healed." The woman lied through a false smile, backing away from the distressed child before leveling her shadowy glare at the scraps of hair piled around the legs of the chair.

"You will return to your room and stay there until we summon for your presence...Your friend will be waiting for you."

She clicked her leather heeled boots to the wooden door, and the moment the wood dragged over the stone floor, a tall man dressed in tactical black armor advanced in silent, methodical strides.

"The asset has been detained in the brat's room as you instructed Madame HYDRA," he spoke with a cadence of malice, lowering his head as a gesture of respect.

"We disarmed him from weapons and placed restraints to hold him in place in case he disobeys and tries to disobey and take her away." He added, unlocking the chains off the child, grabbing her, squeezing pressure over her shoulder, she unreleased a scream, but he gave her a blank stare.

"Tell the director that everything has been prepared for the induction. The serum has been recreated and perfected from Zola's old records. When all the injections have reached completion, HYDRA will have a new daughter that will follow every command of her father without humanness and defiance." Madame HYDRA sneered with a dark gleam masking over her green eyes when she settled a dark, lusty stare on the girl.

"She will become magnificent." she added, looking at the operative. "Remove the restraints off the Winter Soldier. I want our new daughter to feel safe with him as the transcendence of her new life under our shadow begins."

Lifting her up with one arm, the voiceless operative threw her shivering body over his broad shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes and walked out and down the torch lit hallway.

When he awoke, the muscular planes of his back dug against the hard, cold floor. The Winter Soldier fixed his bleary and ghostly blue eyes on the shafts of moonlight streaming from the arched, barred window and slowly his vision came into focus as the searing and harrowing feeling crawled through his veins. He could smell the dense air permeating through the room, and listened to the familiar cries echo in his ears. Fragments of memory scarred over his impaired mind. He stiffened into an uprooted stance, his darkened eyes scanned over the room systematically until he locked his intense, but vacant glare on a dithering shape curled in a corner.

Solace brushed over his heart, as he felt the iciness melt away as he listened to the sobbing of a familiar voice. He stalked closer in slow and cautious strides, and found her, the child the made him feel human again.

She was different, there he remembered her, long brown hair butchered into same style he wore his own chestnut strands draped over his obscured face.

Her thin features pale and flushed with heat from a violent wave of feverish symptoms..She didn't look like that small, injured angel that he carried through the squalls of the snow tempest. She was prisoner, wounded, scared and alone to fend for her survival against the rabid wolves of HYDRA. His blue eyes widened at the inflamed mark on her neck. The swollen puncture holes of various needles red and to tender to the touch. They had lied to him-given him a false hope in a structured delirium that made him believe that she was safe from the horror.

Who is she?

Halting in his calculated steps, he crouched down to her level. Instinct told him to rest his hand on her trembling shoulder, the Winter Soldier realized that even now she was changing into a dehumanized weapon.

Tears for the first sign of her soul breaking apart. He knew that she wasn't going to keep her innocence, but he also that this child needed him; and he never had a friend who didn't treat him as a hollow shell. Maybe she was his freedom out of the desolation of red carnage, vivid nightmares of bloodshed and abhorrent screams and the senseless deliriums that obstructed his real memories. His real existence.

A deep sinking anguish was churning in his stomach; he reached out his metal hand, and placed it over her bruised shoulder. Searing the enthralling pain with the coldness of his frosty touch of alloy that seeped into her throbbing bones as the moonlight shone over them.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. I know you want to cry, but you can't...You need to show strength. Not weakness." he crooned in soft Russian a brush of soothing warmth, allowing his breath to ghost over her tarnished skin. "Pretend it's just a bad dream," he muttered, taming her despair. He looked clinically focused on the cotton sheathed around her tiny waist.

The girl lifted up her head, wetness streaked over her sallow cheeks. She dared herself to deep into the molten flecks of silver that had gripped around the soulless darkness of his pupils. Razor shards of azure that melted into a light crystal blue underneath the shadow of his long strands of brown hair.

Am I really doing this?

She elevated her shaking hand, but she managed to crack a smile, his eyes reminded her of a December sky, clear and carried mystery of winter. Her fingers stroked over the full shape of his still lips, the calmness that shone in his sharp gaze kept her steady and unafraid.

He simply pulled her to his lap, and placed her head on the smooth planes of his fervent chest. His metal arm wrapped like a shield over her tiny form as he lowered himself down to the floor, keeping her secured against his ardent body, using every ounce of heat to keep her warm.

She nuzzled snug against him, and drifted into a slumber while he conserved his lethal stare on the room's door, ready to attack if danger threatened to claim her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

Sickening and feverish sweat awoke her out of the vivid nightmares, tears streaked over her ashen cheeks and dissolved against the soothing warmth emitting from his exposed and chiseled chest. She was entering a void filled with warp fragments of damaged memories.

Images of her mother fading into dingy blackness. Everything had become wave a distant memory, it almost like poison had dripped into her veins, clotting her blood with unrelenting coldness and numbness.

"Mommy!"

The pain stuck into the hollow bones of her rib cage, coating her heart with burning ooze that slowly ate away into her soul. She wanted to scream out her mother's name, but for some reason, she could only conceive faces in her mind, no names or numbers.

Blank pictures, colorless and blemishing into monotonous shades of grey. Each image of her parents and baby sister disjointed with static. Some were spindling into a web, twirling like prey trying to escape from the shackles of the weavers. Red spiders with many heads, slowly crawling a taunting, until it struck at the heart and devoured the innocence of that dream. Everything felt strange. Everything was wrong. She looked about the room. her brown eyes had sharpened her vision and she zoned out the furniture. Many things were old, and seemingly covered with ingraining dust. The pain overtook her, splotches consumed the clarity in her eyes.

Releasing a flood of tears, the girl violently gripped the frayed blanket cloaking over her distressed form, clinging onto something that kept her from drifting further into listened to the drumming sound of his resilient heart beating against her ear brought a knell of comfort to her aching body. She nuzzled her face into the graven creases of his bare pectorals, her tiny fingers traced over the silver crescent scars etched in layers of firm muscle. They were small to the naked eye, barely visible in the shafts of sunlight caressing over his body.

For a vague moment, she became a captive, falling into a trance of a dark past written on the planes of his chest.

She wanted to pound her small fists into the stone floor, unleash all the anguish knotting in her body. She wanted her captors to hear her torture, but her voice had been locked away by exhaustion.

At that moment when she sniffled and buried her face fully into his chest, her nose crunching his metal hand stroked over her back in circular movement, easing away the tension.

The feeling of his touch came to her heart. She shot her head up and blinked momentarily, tying to focus against the tears blurring her vision. It took a few more blinks, until she gained enough clarity from the mushy darkness to stare into his intense blue eyes that pulled her into a winter storm.

Feeling the infliction and confusion hasten in her, the girl lifted her shaking hand and cautiously rubbed her fingers over the dimple engraved in his strong chin. Her brown eyes steadied and lifted as she took in his appearance, each time she looked at him, he seemed less intimating. Squares of light around his pupils, tenderness veiled by fierce semblance, but she knew that he would never harm her. She trusted him with her life, giving him a chance to become human and fight against the morbid programming of dehumanization wired in his brain.

There was a etching of fear written on his face, timidness of mere child trapped inside him, as his unnerving stare never broke his eye contact from her curious gaze.

With a faint smile, the girl straightened against his lap, crossing her little, thinned legs over his black combat pants.

"What do they call you?" she asked in a soft voice. She locked her eyes with him.

The Winter Soldier blinked, but he kept his lips fastened into a taunt line. He didn't know what to say to her, he had never expected this to happened.

Staring in her large brown eyes, made his stern expression flattened out into hint of confusion.

"I don't remember." he spoke in a distant voice, allowing his gravely whisper to carry through the air.

His eyebrows creased, and he tried to collect olden memories, but everything was scramble into a crimson haze or horror.

He wrenched his eyes away from her, and added after swallowing a large gulp of air, more words of disbelief poured out of him. "I don't think I have a name."

"I have a name, but I can't remember it." she replied, biting on her lower lip. Her scattered thoughts were collapsing. "But I know I do have a name."

He lowered his head, lips pulled into a frown. "You will remember," he spoke in a ghostly whisper, his eyes locked on his metal knuckles rolling as he flexed his hand.

"Did the same thing happen to you?" He shot her with a vacant, obscured glare. She didn't flinch. "Did you lose your family and get hurt?"

A heaving sigh erupted from his chest. His Adam's apple was bobbing along the wall of his throat, and he stared at her, struggling to force out a breath. "I don't know." he answered with incoherent words. His metal hand unclenched and raked through his dangling and long tresses of mussed hair. His fingernails dug into his soft, oily surface of his skull, gripping a fistful and screwing his eyes shut. He looked disillusioned and lost in his own mind. His trembling lips moved, but she couldn't hear what he was saying in harsh Russian.

The Winter Soldier looked down at his shimmering alloy, as umbrage of a wraith was overtaking him.

Most of his matted hair concealed his face. Dots of sweat trickled over his brow and a sharp clenched of his jaw revealed inward torment.

He stiffened against the wall, feeling the bare muscular planes of his back settle into the spaces of the stone.

For a long moment, silence hung between them. He looked at her. "I remember feeling pain and snow...Everything else," he paused, his throat creating a clicking noise as he searched for memory. "I keep on seeing a face...A man on a bridge calling out someone's name and his eyes filled with tears. Maybe I knew him, but I..."

His upper row of teeth dragged over his bottom lip. "I don't remember his name." he scalded at those images twining in his brain and then his ardent blue eyes fixed on the dimness still linger around the vast room.

With a sweep of his lashes against skin, he had crushed the tears building watery film in his eyes. Just one had manged to escape. It slid down the chiseled plane of his tensed cheek and fell to her hand with a gentle splat. "I'm not supposed to feel," he half-growled, fasten his lips into a condensed sulk. "They told me I couldn't cry...that I hollow and cold as metal."

He settled his intent gaze on to the girl, his blue irises lightened, and mouth opened, "It's you," he rasped, blinking and looked harder into her small face. "You're not afraid of me. Not like the others around here. I don't understand why you stay close to me, I'm dangerous...I don't mean to be, but I am."

He respected her bravery, and felt a burst of warmth reemerged in his body when he stared into the caramel swirls of her innocent eyes with his own glassy crystal azure chasms. "Why do you allow me to stay with you?" he asked in a voice of desperation.

The lavish shapes of his mouth folded into a pained grimace. "You do know that might hurt you?"

"The woman with the green hair said that I will be someone's...someone's daughter," she spluttered out words and narrowed her head, clasping her tiny hand over her wrist; her voice was threatening to crack. "I do not want a new mommy or daddy. No one can replace them. No matter what the monsters take away from me."

She turned her head away suddenly, keeping her wary focus on the window panes, and stared at the rays of sunlight breaking through ashen clouds. Her eyes watered with stinging tears. "I want to go back home."

The girl crossed her thin arms over her chest, squeezing against her throbbing ribs. "I don't like this place." She combed her finger through butchered strands of her brown hair; some of the locks were uneven in length. She was showing the stoic assassin her distress through forceful yanks that jerked her head. "They do bad things to people. Make them ugly."

Flexing his half- gloved hand on the girl's shoulder, the Winter Soldier applied toasty warm to resonate the echoes of pain moiling in her body. "Hey," he bellowed in loud and unsteady voice that made her quake under his stare and conveyed his order, with a slight inkling of displeasure, "Stop crying."

She blanched at the tone of his voice, and halted her tears, sniffling. Her little heart felt bruised by all the traumatic imagery cultivating in her mind. "I'm scared."

"You're not dead. You should keep that in mind," he discharged out a growl. He didn't know how to converse with a child who appeared around the age of seven. This was strange and disheartening for him.

Listening to the chorus of sobs, he regarded her with a passive gaze, trying to understand her emotions, and watching the wetness streak down her pale cheeks. The remnants of his heart burned against his chest. Feeling repulsed,he ignored the tug on the threads of his soul and searched beyond her glossy stare, blowing out a frustrated breath. A few stands flipped over his blue eyes when she wailed out crackles of grief and shook against him.

"I need you to stop crying, he spoke with a hint of lightness in timbre. His eyes shifted and lips went still. "You can't show that you feel. They will not allow it because it's a weakness for them." He leveled her with tenderness gleaming through the shadows casting over his menacing face. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes," she baited out a heavy breath, and leaned her head into his chest, allowing him to feel the warm tears veneering over his skin. "I understand." Before he could say a few more words, the girl inclined her head, looking up at him with pleading brown eyes. "Will you please stay here with me?"

The Winter Soldier was calculating her heartbreak in silence, and it made him feel like a knife wielded in his heart when her little voice beckoned for his security.

She was so small, fragile and alone. He refused with every ounce of his scarred humanity to allow himself not to abandon his mission. He made a promise once to a young boy with corn silk hair and gentle blue eyes, maybe a little brother that he would never leave his side. Now, those memories felt like a wasted dream, yet the vow seemed to become reborn back into his defective and corroded soul.

"Do you need me?" he asked with a rive of modulation, gazing at her with his unyielding eyes. She nodded for a second. "I will stay with you."

She smiled, and settled her face back onto his chest. She closed her eyes and listened to thumping of his heartbeat. "I like you. I don't care what that witch says about you...You're a good man."

the Winter's Soldier's blue eyes enlarged and breath grew into heavy coattails, "I'm not a good man..." He echoed back, tearing from his clasped lips. Abruptly, he turned his head away and tried to restrain his guarded emotions seeping out of his tensed bones. "The world calls me death...I am the Winter Soldier." He seethed with bitterness mixed with hollowness in his voice. That is my existence."

He clenched his jaw tight. "I am a ghost that haunts good men in their nightmares. The perfect soldier and killer. I am not a good man-I'm a weapon." He narrowed his deaden blue eyes back to her, watching her drift into a peaceful slumber. He lowered his head down and pressed a warm kiss over her shortened locks. He held it there and whispered, "You're pure as light. You're freedom."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Staleness of winter permeated through the air, flickers of amber light reflected off the stone walls. She at the long wooden, mahogany varnished table, long polished lime green fingernails tapped absently over the stem of the wine glass.

The nefarious and lethal Madame HYDRA, sat rigid in the high back chair, her translucent eyes darkened with malice, and shifted to the piles of folders marked with black imprint of HYDRA. The room was deathly still, and the ambiance of fear hung over the entire room like a thick cloak. She flexed her jaw, and stared eye leveled at the man fashioned in a choral gray business suit, with glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

She settled her changeless emerald colored eyes on him, observing his stern expression. She finally decided to cut the silence.

"The child shows potential. She carries much complacence that can't be easy broken with our methods," she affirmed, glancing at the folders on the table; her with a twist of an obscured smirk holding over the corners of her dark shaded lips. "I know she has a weakness that we can penetrate. The assent is her comfort and someone that she feels safe with, I suggest if we can make the Soldier deceive her then, the bond will commence and HYDRA will have a new daughter. A new bloodline for our reformation."

The director gave her a curt of a regal nod, "Her mind is already damaged from the loss of her parents. She will become easy to control once we take away her innocence."

Madame HYDRA stared at him for a long moment and locked a firm gaze his way, the taste of power seeped over her soft lips and trickled down the raw walls of her throat. She remained unspoken, conceiving her thoughts and discarded her concern for the latest victim. Her eyes glinted against the shadows veiling over her pale skin. Wickedly, she licked the sweetness of the wine off the curved edges of her lips before giving her piece of observation. A spiteful husk carried out the words cultivating in her cunning, debased mind, "The girl will learn every aspect of fear, her mind and body will become immune to submission for her handlers. She is a young omega, weak and useful to break under our commands."

Narrowed dark blue eyes looked over the documents clutched in his wrinkled hands, "Is she strong enough to sustain function after the injections?"

She sneered instantly at his gruff words and gave him an inhumane glower. "She has survived this long." she admitted, before adding to her statement with mildly growl, "She doesn't know how to react to pain. Each injection feels like a wasp sting to her pathetic body. Soon her arms will become numb and she will feel nothing...Dehumanized into perfection molded by our hands."

"The asset will stay with her until she no longer feels attachment to humanity."

With a short nod and a licentious smirk, she replied, "What if he gains his existence back?"

The director shook his head. He pursed his lips and dropped the folder on the table, "I don't need him out in the field with the others. He has completed his missions, but his services will become needed once things have started in motion back in America ... We have limited access to the tools we need to rebuild this empire. The parasites have already infiltrated, it's just a matter of time and patience until everything becomes devoured and old enemies are compromised."

Rubbing her lips, and smacking them once, Madame HYDRA, reached for a folder, pulling it closer, and stared with intent green eyes at the printed names and photos of the targets. "Just tell me,, how we are going to bring them to ruin and leave only ashes?" she questioned, scraping her index finger nail over the photo. A red and white shield with a star in the middle of blue paint in the center.

Human.

He fought against the weaving folds of silence hanging over his stoic frame. His muscled legs tucked against his pectorals, chin resting on his right knee, and the arch of his plump lips rubbed over the leather material of his pants. His ghostly eyes hardly stared at the doorway; faint squares of light became trapped in the chasm of piercing azure as he passively roved his unnerving stare, intently glancing at the girl huddled underneath blankets. She was beautiful in the shafts of morning light, pure, frail and innocent. The marks of abuse etched in the skin of her small limbs, dark mahogany strands had fallen limply over her still face as he acutely listened to the soft whimpers of distress. He rued silently that the child probably needed food, and refused to allow weakening form to starve.

"I know that you're not sleeping..." He said in a roughened and raspy voice, his changeless gaze looked directly at her, watching her delicate pale lips curve into a playful smirk. She pulled the blankets over her face, and wept with shattering breaths as tears drenched the cotton of the sheets. He straightened to his full height, and advanced closer to the bed in slow and hushed footing, the echoes of his heart prompted him to engage over the obstruction of shadows.

He unclenched his teeth, and paused on the bed side, lowering his metal hand, trying to control the contortion of the metal plates as he gently tugged on the blanket. "I gave you the order not to cry. You've been disobeying the commands I have given to you." he affirmed in a direct undertone. The covers peeled off, as he narrowed his feverish blue eyes down at her, fixing his intense glower on the tears streaking over her ashen cheeks.

Unsettled, he mashed his teeth, into his bottom lip, waves uncertainly jostled over him, rattling his bones as he reached an impasse between emotion and order. He blinked out the red haze, the crimson hue that always veiled over his vision. He felt the drills circulate through the ivory of his bones when he subjected to feeling his humanity butchered into pieces and reconstructed into a devoid of a desensitized weapon. Something flickered in his soul, the moment locked his protracted gaze on her face, and he instinctively settled his real hand over the side of her face, sliding his thumb gently underneath her bleary eye, and swiped away the wetness. "You need to stop crying. They will hurt you." he aforementioned, trying to ease her pain with a warm brush over his fingers against her blemished skin, and he sighed, deeply and broken. "I know you're scared and that you can feel pain ... You need to show no more emotion around them."

She grasped his arm with a thrust of her hand, holding on to him as if he had become her life line. "The woman with green hair has my locket..." she panted out frantically, ignoring the growls of hunger erupting from her bony, thinned stomach. «It belongs to me." she dragged out with a weak breath, tension creeping fast in her throat. She needed the locket, needed to stare at the photo of her parents. The only treasured memory that she could keep, and help the damaged part of her mind to remember their faces and names. "It was a gift from my mother. I need it back."

He felt her little body cling onto him. The girl's face buried into his shirt of frayed black as his hand lowered on her shoulder, "I do not know if I can get it for you," he whispered, stiffening his lips into a tight grimace. His icy eyes systematically moved to the door. He twisted his torso, dark strands whipped against his tensed face as set his glaring blue daggers lethally at armed operative mounted in the division of light and shadow. The man was carrying metal tray of food gripping in his gloved hands. The Winter Soldier dropped his gaze on a green apple, and instantly strode to the door. "The apple," he demanded, holding out his metal hand, and clenching his chiseled barked out, "NOW!"

The operative nimbly gave him a quick nod, and threw the apple into the air. The assassin caught it with a quick reflex of his arm, and scalded at the young dark haired Russian, turning on his boots and moved back to the girl.

"Leave us," he growled lowly; effortlessly scooping her trembling frame in his arms, hoisting her off the bed and settled his body on the floor; pressing the muscular planes of his rigid back against the mattress. Placing his hands against her sides, he held her securely, bringing his knees apart and giving her more room. He pulled out his knife, twiddling in between his fingers, with efficient movements of his knuckles and sliced the blade through the white, juicy flesh of the fruit, cutting the apple into small rectangular pieces and handed them to her. "Here, eat this."

She shook her head, stubbornly, "I'm not hungry." she cried softly, her arm clutching around her waist, disregarding the apple slices. Her body trembled with trepidation. He stroked his metal fingers with her shorted locks, calming her down with a tender gleam in his focused and haunting blue eyes, he was aware of her sickness, high fever and churning stomach. The lingering stench of torture reeked over her skin, wavering in the air between them. She was fading, and becoming weaker each time they removed her from the room. He had to save her.

"You are starving yourself." he intoned with a concerned husk in his voice, and he contemplated on forcing her to eat or giving her a choice. He pursed his lips, fighting against the vicious and toxic programming the emerged from the dark recesses of his marred mind. Glitches of compassion barely stayed, but he managed to withstand the violent urges, and cautiously lift his hand up to her face, dabbing the slice of the apple against her chapped lips, allowing her to feel the cool juice. "I want you to open your mouth," he said in a tentative pitch, looking directly into her uneasy brown irises. "This will help you feel better."

No response. With ire shadowing his face, the Winter Soldier then grabbed her jaw, pressing over the bones, and forced her mouth to unlock. She squirmed, but he managed to slip the piece over her tongue. "Chew it," he ordered in a firm voice. She stared blankly at him, trying to spit it out, he wouldn't let her. Finally, she moved her teeth over the diced apple, and swallowed. He gave her a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his full lips, "Good girl."

She leaned in forward and nuzzled her head against his sculpted chest, shivering against the feverish chills encasing over her bones. His flesh hand cautiously rubbed over her back, applying heat as he held her close to him, narrowing his piercing azure eyes down, feeling the vulnerability and humanity cloak over him. It made his heart swell.

Listening to her moans of discomfort, the threads of his soul warred, he felt the instinct, broke through his programming, watching the tears slope over the alloy plates of his arm, feeling her jerk against the distress and pain. He slid his metal hand over her dangling locks, finding her forehead . He instinctively tilted his head down and pressed cold relief over the hot skin of her brow. His lips held there for a long moment and he closed his eyes and whispered as he listened to her wheeze out a straining cough, "Stay with me, little angel..."

Agent Brock Rumlow trotted his haughty strides down the vacant hallway; a sadistic hunger masked over his dark chocolate eyes as he ceased in his footing ibefore an arched barred window. He stood pliant, hiding the impatience clotting in his veins, dim light reflected over his tactical gear, black Kevlar vest, resistant to straight-shots and knives from assaults he endured during his covert missions with his team. His moderate tan skin darkened as his gloved fingers rub over the handle of his combat knife attached to his belt. When he acutely listened to the door creak open, he involuntarily positioned his slender frame into a defensive stance. He glared dangerously at the director with his unyielding eyes set into a harden expression . He kept his lips into a neutral line and listened in mute silence to his direct orders of his superior.

"Did your team receive the orders to remove the bodies from the site?" The director asked, looking over his glasses and pursed his lips into a firm grimace. "I want no loose ends. The evidence of the attack must become ash; our newest asset is warring against emotions and memories of her parents. We need to rake off everything and leave her in the dark about the truth. Her bloodline is our future."

Rumlow drew out a deep, abysmal breath, his dark eyes gleamed with ire, "What about our loyal dog? He has shown emotion towards the brat...Weakness and allowed her to compromise his programming. Should the asset receive punishment or have his mind swiped to restore him back into a weapon?" he questioned, leveling and unnerved glower at his superior. He felt something unsettling fall deep into his gut, he knew the child lacked discipline and carried defiance within her tiny body. He needed to tear her into shreds, making her feel pain and force her to enter the void of her deepest and darkest fears until she will become a vacant soldier to his commands.

He was meticulous with performing levels of brutal torture to corrupt the human mind. He was a dog of carnage, a beast that craved to taste innocent blood and watch his victims scream under his shadow. "The asset is acting like the runt's protector-I have been observing them, and I sense they share a connection almost like a brother and sister. He is becoming defective."

"Rumlow, you know what happens when complacence takes hold of the mind?" the older man executed with a firm pitch in his voice. "We extract it by taking a little piece at a time."

"Yes, sir." Rumlow answered with a calm hint of cadence in his gruff voice. His scruffy jaw flexed as he narrowed his nefarious stare at his knuckles. "It will necessary to remove her past. I will give the orders to Rollins to firebomb the area of the girl's estate. All thw bodies have already have been extracted to different locations and cremated as instructed by Madame HYDRA. There will be nothing for her to attach too, she is at HYDRA's mercy now."

The director nodded, his commanding grayish navy colored eyes settled on the operative, "Once the girl regains her strength, break her will," he said, with an emotionless tone ragging from his throat, "Use the asset. Make him bleed until that little girl finally gives in to our corruption and allows the serum to emerge into her body."

Dismissively, Rumlow gave him a curt of nod, the bones of his neck cracked, "Understood, sir."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

Looking into the swirls of caramel, he hated the feeling distant and stoic, it made his stomach churn and bones feel petrified. It made him want to become human again.

It made him want to shield his warmth over her shivering body as she curled against his side. Her laden arms wrapped over his stomach. He felt the tremors subside as he fondly stroked his metal hand through her shorten locks of brown hair. He wanted to see more humanity, at least understand emotions that many HYDRA agents that he had observed in the past never held on their harden faces.

You can't feel. You're a weapon. Hollow and cold.

His metal fingers slowly made their trek down her back, carefully avoiding the bandages that covered her wounds, she was still shrunken down, timid, afraid and drenching his black shirt with salty tears.

He took a deep breath to steady himself and glanced at the doorway, before his intense blue eyes snapped down to her paled face.

"Why can't I go outside?" The little girl asked, grabbing the martial of his shirt into small fists with a tight squeeze as she sniffled into his tensed muscles.

"Uh...» He cleared his throat and coughed roughly. "I don't know why you can't leave your room..." His voice drifted as he turned his gaze back to the door, just to double check. "I think I have an idea, you have to stay right here and don't move..." He mumbled, barely sounding firm, he gently settled her arms down, and eased himself off the floor, still looking at the door, with his intense blue eyes. He could sense danger, impending threats in the shadows, and even though his was a lethal killer, he knew harm would come to her, if he blinked.

"Where are you going?" she asked in a weakening voice, and tried to lift herself off the floor, but her balance was unsteady, and legs wobbled as she stood up against the wall.

His jaw clenched as he tried to retain his tetchy anger that was growing in his veins as he glanced over his shoulder, eyeing her with a ravenous glower.. There was a part of him that wanted to show his benevolent streak to her, but his programmed mind kept that part locked up inside. Frustrated, he released a deep breath. It blow steadily from his throat, but his veins were surging with bitter rage. "I'm not going anywhere...I can't." He narrowed his blue eyes at the floor. His torso twisted and he moved in haste towards the balcony. He snapped off the lock and took a step outside. The moment he saw a pile of snow, he grabbed a handful with his metal fingers forming into a ball.

"What is that?" She asked and staggered closer to him, looking up at the snowball in his hand.

He stiffened his lips into a disgusted grimace. "I told you not to move," he barked ruefully, not wanting to listen to her little voice. She was relentless, and shifted her tiny form in front of him, looking up at his face with her needy brown eyes. Growling under his breath, and averted her stare.

"Stop looking at me like that," He mumbled sharply, his voice deep and gravelly, he was trying to hide the lightness shining in his blue eyes as her frail hand touched his metal plated wrist. Blowing up a frustrated breath, a few pieces of his dark hair flipped out of his eyes, and crouched down slowly to her, holding out his bionic hand, and whispered in a gruff tone, "Take it."

She gave him a bright smile, and took the snowball out of his hand, her fingers curled over the cold layers of ice, and her body shook against the wispy flakes that fell into her hair. "Why did you make this for me?"

The Winter Soldier sucked his lips into a tight grimace, "I don't know, I thought it was the right thing to do and..." He trailed off, shifting his eyes back to the bedroom's door. "I think we need to go back inside."

"Thank you," she entrapped his waist inside the lock of a grateful hug, he suddenly became startled by her emotions that had entered inside of his heart.

"You're welcome," he returned, holding her against him and ignoring the commanding voice of Brock Rumlow in the doorway that shot out the orders to move into the hall. He didn't want to depart from her, not when she needed him to protect her, but he had to obey for her survival. Pulling away, he guided her back into the room, lifted her on the edge of the bed and told her, "Stay here for me," he placed his hand on her frozen cheek, I won't be long."

Staring at the tears roll down her face, he stepped away from the bedside, feeling another piece of his soul rip and moved in hastily strides to the door.

"You're needed outside, asset." Rumlow spoke in a emotionless voice, keeping his dark brown eyes latched on the child, and he waited for the assassin to disappear into the shadows, and then he moved into the bedroom. He thumped his boots and placed his gloved hand on her trembling shoulder. "It's getting colder outside and I know that you want to go and play. Don't worry, your friend will be out there playing a few games with some of my pals..." He settled a villainous glare on the Winter Soldier. A darkened grin stifled over his lips"Why don't we play our own little game?"

She glared up at him, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers...Even the ugly ones," she smirked, holding her defiance, and he hand squeezed harder on her shoulder.

"I'm not stranger, I'm an old friend of Winter," he grinned darkly, yanking her arm, and pulling her off the bed, blocking out her screaming protests. "Now, lets go outside and play..."

In the devoid of the snow, the Winter Soldier stood on motionless on the frozen ground, breathing the cold air as it scraped against his lungs. The slashes of the wind bit against his tensed jaw, he never flinched. He remained uprooted on the mounds of snow, his leather combat boots pressed with traction as his tresses of dark hair dangled over his pale haunted azure eyes.

He was immune to the coldness encasing over his marred bones, the alloy plates of his metal arm never grew stiff as the temperature dropped a few degrees.

Restless, he felt the churning of his disheveled soul rip into shreds as his intent, murderous glower leveled with the faints flakes of snow falling from the ashen clouds above his frozen body. He wanted existence to flow back into his veins, to the warmth of his own blood pulsing with the single pound of his heart.

The Winter Soldier did not have a name; he did not have a birthday, a reason to step forward without the directive of voices commanding him to move; no emotions gathered over his chiseled face. Everything felt like it was raked away when he had been strapped into the unbreakable restraints, injected with lucid substance that made his veins burn with liquid fire. He was a hollow weapon, molded in the image of HYDRA; his hands were laden and glued to the cold metal of sniper rifles, pistols and knives.

Car explosion. Two charred bodies..Americans...Husband and wife.

There was no escape for him, no freedom to run without his handlers hunting him down. Extraction of his humanity always happened, if he remembered a single name, a lyric of olden song that replayed in the recess of his impaired mind. Lately, after rescuing the child, he had been haunted by distant past. Images configured and flashed when he dared himself to close his eyes, and fall back into the darkness.

"Tell me what you see, Soldier?"

"There is a boy," he felt his own breath ghost over his chilled lips, feeling the warm of the memories reemerge back into his fractured heart. He blinked a few times, batting his lashes against his frozen cheeks, melting the particles of snow, as he released a deep, abysmal sigh of confusion. He was incoherent with words, mumbling in harsh Russian, and squeezing his eyes shut, relenting against the thralls of pain crashing over his body.

He entered the throes of delirium, forcing images from the rifts of his barred subconscious. He always expected his fate, the coldness and the bite of death penetrating farther into the marrow of his solid bones. It was his punishment. "I remember a boy...He had golden hair and bright blue eyes. He looked ill...dying in a small room...The boy needs..."

"Kneel down, Soldier," a virulent baritone of German commanded in the dimness of gray light. "That's an order..."

Feeling his legs strained, he crashed to his knees. He wrapped his arms over his Kevlar vest, rocking his body frantically, entering another relapse, feeling the weights of his sins crush his bones into paste. He blocked out the barren landscape, reentered the myriad cimmerian pools of chaotic thoughts, swirling into ripples of dark maroon and sooty black until everything swallowed into a chasm.

Screaming.

It was a sound that had been emblazon in his blood clogged ears. His head like it had been filled with flame. He felt the cracks of his soul open as the tantalizing voltage from the machines surged through his battered form.

He was a prisoner under the shadow of their merciless torture. His bare muscles pressed against the cold metal of the chair, listening the probes buzzing as the steel arms lowered and cloaked over his blood stained face. His right hand trembled with tiny tremors as the breath of his lungs sucked out when the shackles clasped and he forced himself to recline backwards.

"Steve..." he whispered as watery lines of blood trickled from the swollen corners of his mouth. "Steve...I'm coming home..." He choked out pitches of weakened words; only then to receive a slap of a backhand. The raw skin heated with invasive pain of shocks, making his jaw grow partly numb, until onslaught reached the stiffened muscles of his chest.

"Steve is a dead," the virulent response of his superior echoed in his ears. "The American super-soldier died...He failed his mission." the man coldy added, snapping the restraints over his heaving torso into place; and he couldn't budge a muscle; his chest strained and breath hitched as the encroaching, horrific droning noises of machines rippled through his pulsing veins. "Let's pretend it's just a bad memory-a nightmare that can be easily erased...Just like a soldiers name on a grave."

He became captive under a pair of grayish-blue eyes, burning with cruelty like toxic blight melting the snow, watching him slowly contort in thralls of agony in the torture chair, his face twisted with excruciating pain.

The penetration of agony punctured into his heart, as he felt the smoldering tears roll steadily down his bruised and ashen cheekbones. His face stung and he tried to force force out screaming protests, but he was rendered voiceless, condemned to silence.

"Bite down on the mouth guard..."

His response was quick and clear. Blood and salt mixed in the water building over the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth just enough to spite on the floor. With his act of unbreakable defiance he revealed to his handlers, that he still was human. Another slap in the face jerked his head surprisingly to one side as he yelped aloud. The knells of his pain ended when the rudder mold of a mouth guard pushed over the upper row of his teeth, and his head held into place. The metal probes swiveled into an upside down position, latched over his temples. The vibrations rattled his skull; he felt bile making its course up his throat as he screamed out his fear at the malevolent enforcer-the new director who spoke in American tongue.

"You cannot break me!" he screamed in rage against the mouth guard, he was relenting as the electric shock waves melted inside is eye sockets. "I'm a kid from Brooklyn...My name is James...Buch..."

He could not contain the tears; his skin felt charred, heartbeat skipped and soul ripped into threads. He closed his eyes, fighting with every breath, until his tongue grew brittle and everything he had kept in his mind faded into red pulses of confusion, order and death. The blood in his veins hardened and emotions erased in the surges of volts jolting against his heart.

Finally, after jerking violently, the young soldier gave into the pain. He allowed it to consume him, until all he felt was pure, feral, sickening, brutal and morbid fire turn into fathoms ice that coated over his marred soul, inescapable and damaged...Winter.

He drifted out his mania when a pounding force of a leather fist rammed into his jaw, making him double over as blood stained the snow underneath. Vision dimmed for a few seconds, as he stared up at Von Shulter cracking his knuckles with a sadistic expression painted on his tanned face.

The Winter Soldier grunted aloud, and with an upsurge of rage, he flipped back onto his boots, and readied his body into a fighting stance. He barred his teeth like a fierce wolf, snarling under his breath and charged at opponent with a bellow of disgust. Nothing could restrain he clenched jaw and felt the ignition of unknown emotions grow untamed. With a fast reflex, he removed his knife, and threatened Shulter with a fast sway of his blade in the frigid air. Angrily, he clenched his metal fist, his ire and adrenaline spiked as he lunged at the operative with his blue eyes darkened into full pupil, no white, just blackness.

"The director wants to give you another treatment," Shulter smirked cockily at him; eyeing his knife as the sound of his knuckles crackled under stiff leather gloves. He circled the Winter Soldier, daring the assassin to break out of his resistance to attack. "You've been lacking discipline ever since that worthless brat came here." he spat his back teeth, he looked at the operative with unyielding eyes, glaring underneath tendrils of dark hair, he reeked of sweat. Shulter's sadistic words found a way to jab against his heart. He pushed the Winter Soldier to the edge. He used the girl as his the impassive latched on the assassin's menacing face. Shulter taunted with malice ragging up his throat. "Tell me, Soldier, do you have feelings for the little brat?"

Suspicious, the Winter Solider spat out blankly, "She is my mission..." He responded with a gravelly voice and gripped his metal fingers around the handle into the tightness of his clutch. "Why do you care about how I feel?"

"I do not care," Shulter shot back, scoffing, and he watched his opponent's blue eyes flare with hatred. "You know that you are just a drone. A soulless husk who obeys for us. You are nothing, but a ghost of winter. That little friend of yours will soon join you once she's put into a grave." He effortlessly gestured his hand, to Rollins holding the child's tiny arms against his mid-section, she was thrashing and protesting in Russian, but the operative smirked in amusement. Submitting to her cries, he released his arm lock, watching her fall into the ground. Rollins crouched down on his boots, and grabbed a fistful of her dark hair, yanking her head back up. Blood dripped from her blue tinged lips, and her brown eyes glistened with tears.

Shulter smirked, and aimed the nozzle of his pistol at the trembling child, his face emotionless, and eyes sooty black, as his jaw clenched against the biting wind. He forced out a heaving breath, "You want to feel again, then I will make you feel every emotion possible when I pull the trigger." he glared down at her coldly, tightening his curled finger over the trigger and threatened to pull it back. "All it takes is one bullet to become the difference maker...She will die in...One,...Two..."

"STOP!"

The Winter Soldier snarled, breath exploded out of his lungs. His steely eyes grew vicious and dark as he charged directly at Shulter, shifting as his metal arm twisted into a grappling hook, and he struck the man down. He coiled his metal hand around Shulter's neck, placing the man into a choke hold. His flesh hand squeezed the weak points of the wrist bones, as he applied harsh pressure and jerked the arm upwards, listening the bones crack as rueful smirk crossed over his lips. He made the gun drop into the snow.

"You kill me...She dies," Shulter warned, pulling another handgun from his side hostler and jabbing under the Soldier's chin. His finger taunt on the trigger. He was waiting for the reaction. His dark eyes shifted a glance at the commander who stood at the chained fence, giving him a curt of a nod as he waited. "You think just because you've got a metal arm-you're untouchable. I can see it your eyes...You're weak...and becoming useless."

Abashed by those condemning words pouring out Shulter's mouth, it felt every pitch of breath sear in his blood, and he seethed as saliva gathered against the spaces of his gnashing teeth.

He pressed his knee into the other man's hard stomach, coiling the muscles as his metal hand, made the droning mechanical sounds as he reached for the operative's throat.

It was a form of deadly combat, the struggle to stay focus was impending. Torrents of blood became molten and eyes became a noxious hue of steel as he clasped his hand over Shulter's throat, squeezing the pulse, as he moved the bones underneath skin.

He was becoming bloodthirsty and uncontrollable, if another operative tried to remove him; he slammed his metal into their torso. He wanted to observe Shulter die his cold hands, to stare into the whiteness of death, and hear the last breath.

Kill. Destroy. Terminate.

Red fog consumed his vision as he snarled and pressed against bones, feeling no concept of his actions, just the power of his bionic arm forcing weight into the neck of his opponent...blood pumping...bones snapping and breath fading...he was monster. His mind twisted, not catching up with reality, not feeling the churning of bile in his stomach. Confused, his blue eyes widened and lips parted and blood dripped over the metal plates, and he blanched violently backwards at the moment he listened to sobbing permeating the air.

He released his choke hold, and he stared down, heaving out heavily pants of breath and watched Shulter's eye roll back into his skull.

Remnants of tears fell over his lips, as he jerked back with a sharp gasp, and shunned himself from her weepy eyes, burrowing his face into the crook of his arm.

Rollins clapped at the success of the mission, and lifted the displaced child, seizing her wrist, "Well done, Soldier. The director will be pleased." He placed his gloved hand along her jaw. He forced her to stare at the macabre of blood painted over the snow. Then, he said with a vile flick of his tongue, "How do you like him now, sweetheart?"

Not giving him a response, the girl refused to stare at the morbid sight before her. She dug her face into his leather jacket, hands clawing desperately as the smell of spilled blood wavered in the air.

"No," The Winter Soldier said in crackling voice, his own tears blurred his eyes, she refused to look at him. "I didn't mean do this...You weren't suppose to see this..." He chanced himself a sharp glance, and his blue eyes leveled with the watery maroon smeared over his clenched knuckles.

Shaking his head miserably, he tried to reach for her, but two HYDRA agents blocked his path, and he watched Rollins pick her up in his arms and take her away. He knew that she would have become lost to him.

"NO!" he roared, thrashing his body wildly against the arms pressed over his chest, preventing him from racing for her. "You can't do this to her...She's my mission," he seethed out viciously, blood dripped from his frozen lips, his voice growing throaty and weak. "She is my friend..." He gazed back at her fearfully, tears falling steadily down his rough cheeks as a needle jabbed into the side of his neck.

His eyes fell shut and he poured out his emotions and blood in the snow.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

* * *

Warm tears solidified against the rough skin of his jaw; he allowed the falling snow to bury him as his metal hand curled; scarping in the frozen ground. He needed something to hold on to in his dire moments of feeling utterly unraveled by the tantalizing emotions, thralls of numbness and the aches of his scattering heart.

It never hurt so much.

When the Winter Soldier closed his eyes, daring himself to slip back into the mindless void. He had been pulled back into the emptiness, sitting in a corner. His knees tucked close to his scarred chest, and his blue eyes paled into a hue of sullen white as his dilated pupils captured the shafts of flickering lights caressing over his bruised and exposed flesh.

He was forced to the listen to the emblazon cries of torture, droning echoes of machines and screams of humanity stripped and reshaped into sentinels bearing HYDRA's mark on their skin.

There had been restless nights when he smelt the lingering stench of dried blood smeared over his metal knuckles; the room was cloaked with dingy stagnant that intermixed with a encroaching smell of death. So often he'd listened to the heart-wrenching screams resounding from the skeletal halls of his asylum Fellow operatives. Some sounded mostly human, but others had mechanical pitch ripping from their throats.

Most of the tortured and starving captives he saw when his superiors granted him access to leave his confinement, were lifeless husks of programmed machines. No heart beats, no emotion was written on their paled and frozen faces...just a simple and permanent expression of hardened order. This array of devolving humanity into an emotionless legion did not avail inside of him. The forsaken were lost into the weaves of HYDRA; but he had a chance to wield freedom once again.

Through the abyss of crimson, he had felt the memories programmed inside of him. He knew that he was taken as boy, away from his mother and was given to HYDRA. His handlers told him the details, forcing him to believe in deceiving lies that kept his heart and mind at an impasse. For as long he could remember, those fragments of falsehood had been unnatural to grasp in the welcoming darkness of his prison.

He had spent many nights consumed by sheltered pain. Listening to the hollow growls of his emptied stomach, and shedding tears of anguish when the faint images of a frail, sickly boy with short golden hair regressed from his sheared mind. The boy had warm and deep blue eyes, the color of crystal that took away all doubt and made him feel stronger.

He blinked, searching for clarity in his vision, but the haze of tears coated over his heavy lidded eyes. He tried to blank out the mantras and focus on nothing. He wanted to the abyss to consume him, swallow him whole, and devour him.

He didn't want his friend to become a part of biting coldness, programming and the pain. He wanted to give her freedom.

Feeling the clusters of thoughts dim, his metal fingers shakily probed over the ground; he lowered his dismal gaze, allowing the pain to build in his temples. He stared at the drops of maroon, feeling each one depart from his wounds, and rigid lips. His body was still against the chained fence, and his head had begun to pound with trepidation and torrent thoughts of delirium grind against his skull; making him fall back into a merciless prison of ice.

HYDRA tampered with his thoughts, weaving their own ideals into his memory codes, keeping his under their control. While they watched him shattered when the threads of his soul twisted and knotted within, creating a barrier to trap all emotion and allow him to feel nothing. They never stopped him from receiving pain, his injections were persistent, and if he showed resistance to their orders, he'd get slapped by his high superiors until blood strained over his chiseled and bruised cheekbones and heavy-well defined jawline.

Defiance.

He never remembered the details, just tiny fragments of memory that always took him to place where he would wake up screaming in the night and recalling what he once was. It's a sanctuary of darkness; he always had felt the iciness of the of inhumane malevolence encase over his bones, stared into the void, and listened to the sounds of terror as humanity becomes butchered into mechanical slaves.

Death was always welcomed in his gray shaded world, and he tasted the savage nature of the ruthless killer they constructed by torturous experiments. All operations and mind swiping boiled into his pulsating blood and evolutionary process takes hold and injections warred his own instincts, it all became necessary for his survival.

Remnants of her innocent face shadowed his thoughts, her brown eyes that were filled with life and hope; faded into a murky darkness, blocking out the kindling light of her soul.

Pure.

The Winter Soldier didn't remember much from yesterday's experience...he remembered the ice encasing over his bruised limbs, hardening over his raw skin and forcing the blood to freeze in his veins.

He felt the tears gliding down his cheeks, he attempted to stop them, unsure how to react to the folds of emotions consuming his body. He blundered out his sorrows unceremoniously, and then sobbed uncontrollably as the iciness of realization dawned upon him. He knew the little girl was going to become lost soul-a nameless and desensitized weapon.

Inorganic.

"No," he seethed out monstrously, clawing violently through the strands of hair which dangled over his face. Rage stressed in his throat as blood leaked from the corner of his tightened lips; he rammed his fists into the ground, thrashing the dusty snow in all directions. His heart sped up a few notches in his heaving chest, breath grew into rapid pants, and voice cracked into a shuddering cry. "She doesn't deserve this...She deserves to be free!"

He jolted himself awake, bathing in his own sweat; feeling every fiber in his trembling body fuse with anger. He was finally grasping the sensations of feeling, no more searing coldness, but hot blood and pulses of a heartbeat. He was feeling true human emotions again.

"I have to save her..." he whispered out a frosty breath, swiping his gloved hand over his quirking lips, smearing the blood across his sharpened jaw.

Before the asset could ease his full weight up, he felt the cold leather gloved hands of masked men seize him roughly; a pin prick of a needle entered his blood stream. "I have to free her..." he bared his teeth at the dark haired operative, and jerked against the arm lock, feeling the heaviness cross over his neck.

Within twenty seconds of arriving into the chamber, he was dragged forward to the metal doors, carelessly, at an inhumane regard. He was man handled; his black garments ripped off of him, and then replaced by what look like Kevlar and black bullet resistant armor.

The leather jacket zipped up to his neckline, constricting his chest into a stiff barrier; his messy brown hair framed over his face and hostlers strapped to his slender hips and muscled thighs. He was armed with lethal weapons to make him a walking armory when engaging enemy territory- combat knifes, guns, and then a heavy scoped rifle was placed in his metal hand. All loaded up with untraceable shells and released from the safety lock.

A hard graphite mask was placed over his clammy jaw, sealing his lips as he once again became voiceless to protest.

"Human resilience is an infectious disease that ruins order."

The Winter Soldier's face hardened with a tense glare at the coldness in the voice aloud in the shadows. Agent Rollins stepped from his hiding place, and then he watched the obscurity of menacing glower melt into blue fire. Choking up a breath; he fought to release his voice against the barrier enclosed over his mouth. "Tell me where you're keeping her?"

"I assure you the girl is safe. She was frightened by you sudden outburst. You cost me a good agent." The firm voice in the doorway drew his attention.

The director entered the room, flanked by two nervous assistants, approaching the steel table at one corner of the room.

He was dressed in his usual color of a charcoal gray suit and his expertly polished black shoes. His aging face flexed as wrinkles curved at the sides of his mouth. His mussed ginger hair twirled against the crown of his head, as a faint breeze of the chilling outside invaded the enclosed area. His grayish eyes looked down at the pliant asset, with a glimmer of a morbid disappointment.

Halting in his steps at the table, he opened the box on atop of the table, and lifted a chained necklace out; he walked to the Winter Soldier with a confident and haughtily stride. He froze in front of the younger man, cuffing his hands behind his back, and kept himself positioned into a regal stance.

Pursing his lips, he spoke in a direct tone. "Do you even know who this child is?' he questioned, staring at the stillness welled in temperance blue irises, inches from him.

"The girl you saved is the future of HYDRA's reign. Her blood is precious to us. She will reshape this world into our order. I need you to stay away from her..." The director spoke softly, in a low and instructive voice that was a sharp threatening edge to his normal colluding tone.

His sordid words almost felt like knife, molten steel penetrating the layers of the asset's defiance to misbehave was still lodged in his brain, but he wouldn't tolerate the poison seeping from his superiors mouth. He felt the potent urge to kill was clawing in his veins. "You have been subjected to emotions that are making you lose focus on the missions. You killed a a top operative yesterday without my consent. You disobeyed because you wanted to protect her from us..."

The Winter Soldier managed to give the director a curt of a nod, even though he felt the rage bubbling in his veins. "Yes," his muffled voice responded in a rough tone.

The director took a step back, "I see," he replied, lifting the necklace, holding it before the asset's eyes, it dangled before him, gleaming in his darkened pupils.

He watched it sway, still and tensed.

"This belongs to her?" he questioned, his voice low. Unsure. Timid.

The locket was old and tarnished with a name engraved at the back. A name that made his heart swell as he looked deeply at the letters. "I want you to say her name...Let it roll off your tongue...because it will be the last you name you will remember it."

Avrora.

He stared at it for a long, long moment. He bit his bottom lip. He was hesitant to answer. He couldn't say her...Name. It selfish for him to know it without her remembering her birthright. A clamor of buzzing in his mind configured with his hazardous thoughts. His remained locked against the hard texture of his mask.

Sensing his insubordination, the director reached out his hand, tangling it into the mutinous assassin's wild mass of hair, yanking the strands as he listened to a small yelp pierce from the other man's lips.

"Her name is Avrora," he barked, tugging hard, jerking the asset's head downward, before ramming his knee hard into graphite mask. "Aurora..."

Bones into his stiff jaw jostled at the impact, the Winter Soldier instantly staggered backwards; losing his balance and crashing to the concrete floor.

"She will never belong to you," he coughed up watery blood; his lips scraped from the shards of graphite digging into his soft flesh. "You can't own her...She has a life. She is pure." he barked, tasting the blood seep in between his clenched teeth. Rollins lunged in automatically; picking him up by the neck, he snarled viciously as the constricting gloved hands squeezed against his windpipe.

He couldn't fight back, not when he knew Avrora's life was hanging on a thin line.

"Come on, you pathetic excuse of soldier," Rollins discharged out in a seething breath, listening to the bones crack against his fingertips. His eyes darkened into murderous indent as the enraged assassin writhed and thrashed to break out of his hold. "If HYDRA didn't need your sorry ass...I would break your neck right now!" He growled, and twisted his arm, slamming the other man to the floor.

The director moved away, and leaned his stern posture against the wall, folding his arms as he watched the sight of his best agent take down the greatest assassin and expert marksman in the history of strategic warfare.

"You will follow my orders and you will finish you missions...Or you can watch her scream?" his voice raised as he addressed the details of the situation, and then he narrowed his gaze at the drops of blood escaping from the Winter Soldier's mouth. "Tomorrow you will have access to see her for a short period of time. After you will watch as the new reformation of HYDRA is birth once her blood has become extracted. You will not fight or show emotion. Fail to disobey this command and the girl with be harmed."

Spewing out more blood, the Winter Soldier nodded silently, and Rollins released his choke hold. "I will find a way to stop you," he growled in a throaty voice, clamping his eyes shut, he knew that her existence was now in the clutches of HYDRA, and he failed his directive...She will die.

He stood up to his full height of five-eleven, and released a breathless declaration, his unnerved eyes morphed into blue embers against the umbra of his messy hair. "I will not fail her..."

The director marched quickly to him, and slapped his face with a forceful backhand. For a long second the pain seared his jaw bone. He turned his head and glowered dangerously at his superior.

"She is my mission..." he retched out, dizzy and unstable with his emotions. "My friend..."

"Then you will fail her..."

Hearing those soul jarring words enter his ears, the Winter Soldier hung his head low, and whispered out her name, gently and faint, "Avrora."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

* * *

There was no bright and welcoming shaft of daylight caressing over her paled face; she felt no sense of contentment warming over her pounding her heart.

Everything had been abject to numbness that rippled through her bones, pulsating tremors of pain mixed with the feverish chills that had ran rapid in her blood.

She felt dead in sleep, and yet she was aware of the droning masculine voice humming in her ears.

Dread unraveled in her veins, emotions were chipped away from the desperation luring her back to a conscious state. She dared herself to open her eyes. Instead she felt the deep-seated ache tense in between her dark eyebrows, and the unsavory taste of metallic was slithering down the dry walls of her throat. It only grew worse as she shifted her tiny frame against the cold steel penetrating through her spine.

The fogginess of delirium began to lift and she groaned, feeling a touch of someone's gloved hand run over her bare and blemished flesh of her shoulder. Although she tried to react, her mind was still hadn't caught the concept of reality, with the return of her detesting imprisonment. Trembling, eyelashes unsealed against her cheeks and met the dimming grayness of unnatural light. She trembled against the cold steel, fingers curled over her wrists and leather straps bounded her to the table. Heart pounding, she lifted her head up slightly and glanced room the room.

The torture chamber was large, murky water leaked from a contortion of pipes above the lit area, and elevated tables were vacant and chairs with lingering horrors of inhumane punishment. She had been restrained on an operating table. The steel was tarnished with smears of blood, and the circular light hanging inches above her body flickered when she managed to open her chilled lips and whimpered out a faint cry as fear encompassed over her. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she struggled to protest when she brown eyes saw a clear sack of serum attached to a metal pole near the right side of the table.

"Come now, little one there is no reason to have fear. It hurts for a short time." The monotonous and sadistic voice echoed in her pulsing ears; she blinked and stared at a man in a white coat lifting medical tubing off the cart.

"You will get use to feeling pain. You will become numb to these sensations. Your body is going to accept it once we're done purifying your blood."

The girl felt the stirrings, red flags were going up in her mind as the length of the tube clutched in his white latex hands stretched and snapped. As in response, she jerked against the straps, breath was growing erratic and feverish sweat escaped from her pores. Her skin changed into a hue of ghostly white as she felt all the blood drain from her cheeks and locked her watery dark eyes on the needle.

"No..." She mustered up a strangled plea voice fading, shaking her head. "I don't want this..."

"The fear will pass. There will be no long term damage. Just perfection." a calming voice lulled her to turn head her head and threw the unwelcome presence a tiny, vicious growl, reacting to the tone as she felt the coldness of his words crawl over her tightening bones. She blinked and stared at a man dressed in business suit of gray with ginger colored hair. His voice hardened with wrinkles and his dark blue eyes displayed no empathy. To her young mind he was a monster.

A demon.

The director simply leaned his tall stature against the door, he moved in nonchalant pace towards the table, regal steps filled with purpose. He stood at her left side, and gently placed his large hand through her chopped strands of brown hair. She tried to surpass a chill that shot through the ridges of her spine when his fingers brushed coldness over her neck.

"You are doing fairly well, little girl, I have become impressed by you." he crooned in a light parental tone, soothing the tension bubbling in her veins; he knew how to calm the weak and manipulate his victims before the blood transfusions.

The director kept his grayish-blue eyes steady on her despondent gaze of caramel, and then he nodded curtly at the doctor to dab her arm with a cotton swab drenched with alcohol. The older man followed his orders, methodically, and applied the cold swab to the skin of the area where the intravenous would become inserted. When the skin had been coated with alcohol, he prepared the catheter for insertion.

Her head whipped backwards against the table a hard glare of caramel overcame her face. Her lips broke and a small whimper managed to crack through the heated barriers of her throat. She glanced at the intravenous drip and the tubes hanging to her side. "No," she slurred, grinding her teeth in confusion and distress, her heart rate was increasing and skin growing colder. The middle-aged doctor placed his hand on her chest, pinning her against the table as he made a slit in her left hand, pierced through the strong veins and attached the tube to the catheter.

The director stood beside the table and rested his palm atop of her forehead. A slow smile developed over his lips as he watched her drift with heaviness glaring in her brown eyes. She convulsed against the eruption of pain consuming her body, the serum dissolving her humanity with every ounce of it that pumped into her.

"Rest Avora," he whispered in a fatherly tone. "It will all be over soon."

Standing in the guarded cell, the Winter Soldier felt the anger claw in his veins as he settled his unnerved blue eyes on the tanned operative standing in the doorway of his enclosed cell. He didn't move an inch. He couldn't escape from the wrathful glare of dark brown eyes burying into his skull the moment their gazes locked. They refused to break eye contact.

He clenched his jaw hard, tensing as his face became obscured with resentment and disgust. He became absent from emotions, silently calculating his next engagement of attack.

His vacant eyes roamed over Rumlow's medium size and bulky frame, pin-pointing the weak spots that were exposed to his eye level. Olden scars from his past, fractured bones underneath his Kevlar and black leather arm. He knew all his faults. He knew Rumlow thought of he was a loyal lap dog because of his corrupted mind. The operative thought the Winter Soldier was indifferent, spoiled and defiant. That was a cover to hide his true morals. He wasn't a normal man.

His life was never a thought in the minds of his superiors. He created on an operating table, trained under the guidance of Armin Zola and Baron Zemo. His blood was cleansed with the serum and marred arm replaced by alloy plated limb that attached to his nerves and functioned as weapon during combat assaults. At one time he hated it. He wanted to rip the metal arm out of the socket, but after injections and mindless tortures he disowned himself from humanity and respected his commanders and followed orders.

The love he observed during missions was just a sense, not a feeling that he carried into his heart. He had no heart.

His mind and emotions were programmed not to feel, his mind alerted to harness the control of all emotions and froze his own heart. Zola created a weapon-an ultimate assassin to purge the disease from the world. The Winter Soldier's future had already been planned out since the day he came out of the ice. He was the equalizer of HYDRA's new order.

He was opposite symbol of Captain America. The red star painted on his left bicep represented blood. He had been trained to kill anyone who dared to stand in his way. It had always been necessary to rake away lives that were meaningless in his cold eyes. Innocent, weak and infer. Those types of people were targets-not humans or souls. In his inhumane glare they were already dead.

Stepping closer, Rumlow smugly smirked at him and kept his stance less hostile. His face was dark and twisted, creating the illusion of sadistic madness. For a long second he kept his stare evenly on the Winter Soldier. He spoke with a hiss of spite, "I have to admit that brat is very beautiful." he taunted, rubbing his lips. "I think when she's all done screaming I might play with her."

There was flash of black and gleaming silver in the dim shadows of the cell. The Winter Soldier was quick to react, he stalked closer to Rumlow's muscular form leaned against the wall. His metal plated twisted and contorted into a solid and unbreakable mass and thrusted his hand outward, grabbing the operative by the scruff of his neck and hoisted him inches off the floor.

Rumlow's dark eyes widen as he tried to claw at the bionic shoulder, but the Winter Soldier was merciless to the silent pleas of release. He squeezed his cold fingers over the other man's neck, moving the veins under skin and then spun him violently into the air.

Rumlow landed hard on his face, skin touched the cement as squishing noise followed. He rolled onto his back, grasping for breath with black splotches consuming his bleary vision. His upper lip was split from the impact, and blood dripped over his stubble covered jaw. He weakly tried to life himself up, but every bone locked when he felt the icy glare of the asset over him. He applied pressure onto his flank, holding his hand at the spot, and gritting his teeth as he lifted his hazed eyes to meet the lethal glower of the Winter Soldier.

"She won't survive." he spat out blood onto the floor. He still wanted to play the antagonist. "The brat's little body can only take so much pain."

Roaring out his rage, the Winter Soldier bit into his tongue, his blood sizzled and the urge to kill the arrogant mercenary was becoming unrestrained. He knew that his intimation methods were becoming invasive. He needed to unleash his anger and show no mercy. Instead of using his guns and knives, he used his body to wound the operative. He wanted Rumlow to feel his wrath and butcher him for the poisonous words he spoke towards Avora. His friend. His mission."I make you feel pain." he seethed, his voice harsh and vicious. "I will break your body." he gritted, his face morphed into expression of dangerous animal.

He stomped his boots close with encroaching steps towards Rumlow. Then, he paused for a second, looked down with darken stare, waited for his opponent to move under his shadow, and without a warning he raised his boot high, turning his leg into the position of a straight roundhouse kick. He chanced himself a glare to Rumlow's pleading brown eyes, but he didn't care. He was protecting Avora. With a fierce and abrasive growl erupting from the back of his throat, he kicked and missed Rumlow's skull by an inch, his boot just grazed over the spiked raven hair. He lowered his foot, and hunched his shoulders into a crouching stance. 'If you ever talk about her like that..." he breathed out lucid fire, "I will fill you up with lead."

Rumlow spat a gob of blood onto his boot, indignantly. "You better start pulling trigger now, soldier, because she is about to know what real pain really feels like..."

The Winter Soldier's blue eyes enlarged and shifted to the doorway. He clenched his metal hand into a trembling fist. He drew out sharp seething breaths with his jaw tightening.

Ire was brewing, red clouded out his eyes like as if blood dripped over his pupils, simmering beneath the surface. It was seeping out of his muscles, warming his skin with feverish heat as he raged across the floor.

Releasing a deep and wolfish growl, he rammed his fist through the wall, breaking the cement; it shattered into tiny shards on the floor, exploding and showering over Rumlow's face. He pulled his hand out, leaving a huge hole in the wall.

"Avora!" he screamed in livid rage, heart thumping with erratic beats and eyes welled with tears. He twisted around and stared angrily at the 9 mm attached to Rumlow's side hostler. Without rational thought, he became overwhelmed by a flood of emotions and lifted the operative up with one arm; disarming him and throwing his body into the wall.

The Winter Soldier checked the barrel, and held it into a tight clutch. Waves of carnage crashed over his heart as he paced to the door and headed to the direction of a child screaming out for him.

He followed her distressed cries.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

* * *

Focusing on the mission, it was always the one thought that consumed his disciplined mind; there were no alternatives to substitute choice and warring impulse that ravaged through his body.

He followed orders, obeyed the words the machines and high volts of agonizing torture had programmed into his brain. He became numb, and always felt the transfiguration of his morality harden into steel, recreated to serve one purpose-subornation.

After torturous operations, and dissecting the marred and broken bones of his left arm, the Winter Soldier remained silent for seventy years, never unleashing his defiance; afraid to feel the blow of death surge into his frigid veins.

In truth, he knew that he served a fate worse than death; his soul imprisoned into a weapon made of human flesh and alloy plating. He was a machine that switched on for a short period of usage, and then placed back into frozen storage for the next mission.

Inside the barriers of the Winter Soldier, the man who he once had known himself to have been, wanted to feel warmth, instead of coldness, and to take someone's hand without breaking their wrist. Avora, his only friend that he avowed to protect, she was his light out of the icy labyrinth, his freedom against the shackles that bounded to his sabotaged heart.

Making his way through the compound, in fervent strides, the Winter Soldier stalked in hushed and systematical steps down the darkened corridor of the compound. His piercing eyes gleamed in the thick shadows, revealing the swirls of molten blue behind steams of matted, dark chestnut. He froze in his ghostly steps, calculating his next plan of invasive attack.

Tension was flowing in the air, and the stench of fear hovered around him. He could smell the sweat pouring out of the sentinels guarding the steel bars of the 'subornation room' and he acutely listened to the rapid pulses of their blood, watching their regal stances change with uneasy balance.

He waited with patience as a hunter, crouching down on to his armored knees, shoulder blades tightened underneath his garb of restricting leather, and his metal hand gripped over the cement. The game of risk wasn't an option, not when Avora's life was in the clutches of HYDRA's control. He had to be efficient and quick with his assault, and not allow himself to let his guard down, and take out everyone that stood in his way.

Inhaling a deep breath, the Winter Soldier leveled his luminous blue eyes at the door, inwardly cringing as the screaming protests of his friend invaded his ears. His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, blood ran cold as he barred his teeth, and seethed out a rumbling growl that chortled up raw walls of scratchy throat.

His muscles began to constrict with abrasive thralls of pain. His vision darkened, turning everything into hues of blood red, threatening to engulf him with livid blindness of pure and merciless rage.

'Avora,' His unspoken words etched over his heart, and he pulled out his knife from a left pouch at his hip, gripping the handle firmly, as the blade twirled with a slow movement of his fingers. Thoughts of staring at her mutilated body strapped to the chair plagued his mind, distracting and consuming in him with dread folding over his jostling bones.

The hardness of anguish ripped through the steams of his soul that made him feel sick. Quickly, he straightened to his full, intimating height, sucking back another gulp of air, and then advanced closer to doors. Anger and fear pervaded over his menacing face, darkening his blue eyes into slate, causing his muscles to coil with burning sense of remorse.

Advancing in slow and methodical steps, he became abruptly interrupted by Rollins standing inches from the door, with a semi-automatic held in his taunt gloved hands.

He knew his comrade and teammate; he knew the weak points and the areas of battle scars. It was all too easy for him, taking down the American operative, Rumlow's partner, and loyal shadow was the first strategy of his attack. His fleshed hand curled into a fist, and intense glare focused intently on the other man's armored torso.

"You're not permitted to enter this area, asset, it's off limits." Rollins discharged out in a gruff voice, cracking his unshaven jaw and glaring downward at the Winter Soldier. He squinted against the dark, dimly lit corridor.

Rollins felt his thinned lips tightened into a firm grimace of disgust and arrogance, and then the powerful urge to take the master assassin was becoming unrestrained to control.

"Return and wait for further instruction. That's an order." he grumbled, withholding his strides as the heart shattering screams amplified around them, intense.

The Winter Soldier knew that he had to seize the moment, listening to Avora's painful howls of torment drove him to the edge. He felt his blood pumping faster, waves of feverish heat lapped over his skin and the metallic flavor of blood consumed his throat. Instinctively, he positioned his body into an attacking stance, his legs parted and the knife flipped in the stale air, intimating the operative.

"I'm not going anywhere," he hissed, his lips twitched with irritation. Livid resentment sharpened his dark pupils like diamonds made of black ice, and his fleshed hand curled into a tight fist, and he felt his fingernails dig into the softness of his palm as the bones of his knuckles cracked and snapped.

"Oh, I know that look all too well, Soldier." Rollins chuckled tartly, dropping his gun to the gun, a loud clang echoed after the metal hit the floor. He twisted his thick neck, a few cracks and he was muscles locked, his pipe like arms raised and fists readied. "Do you want to do dance, old man?" he spat, missing the assassin's right boot. "If you want to see your little friend, then you're going to have to go through me..."

"Fine by me," the Winter Soldier barked at him, feeling anger surge in his veins, bubbling in his gut. He bent his knees, right arm jutted outward, while his metal arm was a fraction of inch to his torso, the tip of the serrated blade was pointing downward, threatening to twist with the fast movement of his hand.

He waited for a few seconds, giving Rollins a chance, a small chance of a quick counter attack. Once he found his opening, he lunged at the towering operative, slashing the knife close to the man's scruffy face, barely slicing his slick jaw. His right flipped, grabbing Rollin's thigh, and squeezed pressure, making the muscle burn under his strength.

Rollins thrashed wildly, jabbing his elbow into the Winter Soldier's hip, but the metal hand clasped over his wrist, bending it upward, the blade shadowing over his lips. "You can't save her. It's too late...She belongs to HYDRA." he yelped out, feeling the circulation in his leg become defeated by a tingling feeling of numbness.

"She is now our little pet to abuse...a worthless pup. If you kill me then she will experience more pain, and that brat will become a lifeless husk and have no damn memory of you. Either way, she will be harmed. Those screams you're hearing, well, that's just the beginning. We both know what comes next."

He pressed his finger over the red star, "It won't be long now until she's on the operating table..." Rollins jeered, smirking at the blank expression shrouded over the assassin's darkened face, relishing the damage of heart ache that was clearly held in the other man's blue eyes.

Gnashing his teeth, the Winter Soldier clamped his jaw hard, feeling his gums burn as he seethed out vicious drove his blade into Rollin's left thigh, ripping open the flesh as it dragged and sliced through leather and skin. He wanted to see the muscle of HYDRA's band of loyal soldiers bleed out his words. "You're lying..." he roared, breath shot out of his lungs, and his face paled into a unhealthy white.

Then, the Winter Soldier heard the horrific sound of medical saw switching on, and his heart ceased to beat and plummeted to the floor.

It was all too familiar.

Breath grew erratic, and pulled the knife out of Rollin's leg, and he stomped his boots to the door, leaving the operative to attend to his deep, bloody wound. Halting at the door, he brought his ear close to the steel, and tuned in the cries of the child harboring him to engage his rescue mission.

"You go in there...My men will fire." Rollin's warned, limping with one hand pressed on his injured leg. "Can you risk that?"

"Yes," He answered, without hesitation, and barricaded his senses from the wafting smell of spilled blood. Her blood.

His pulse elevated, the sharp clenched of his jaw fastened into a hard set of flesh, and eyes watered as he unleashed a scream, ripping the air out of his lungs. It happened so fast, flashes of red followed the pounding of his skull. He used his metal fist like a battering-ram, punching through the steel, and the circuitry and alloy chrome of his arm constricted into a solid mass as he penetrated the door, ripping it off the hinges.

With a feral eruption of a deafening and crackling roar; he violently tossed the steel into the other direction and accessed the room in heavy, dangerous strides.

Shifting his hardened blue eyes; ignoring the weapons aimed at him, the Soldier came to a halt when he stared at Avora strapped to the medical table with rubber tubing attached to both wrists. Her beautiful face was growing pale with every ounce that taken out of her. They were draining her.

"AVORA!" he screamed, pure horror folded over his face. His glistening eyes leveled to the tears rolling down her blemished cheeks.

He saw the circular bladed saw plugged in, near a pair medical scissors, and a couple of different sized syringes filled with unknown substance he couldn't comprehend. His chest rattled, he was breathless, and felt the unbearable urge to spew out bile. "YOU'RE KILLING HER!"

"Stand down, soldier."

He whipped his head around, dark tresses lashed over his eyes and face contorted into a beastly glower. His chest heaved, and animosity submerged out of his veins. He was slowly entering a killing rampage, his eyes moved over the operatives and assistants.

Calculating, he threw the blood stained knife into one man's throat, slicing the vein, as the target staggered backwards, holding his neck, and choking on his breath. However, the other armed agents had him marked, and safety locks clicked aback.

Undaunted, the Winter Soldier took a step forward, locking his intense blue eyes at the director standing next to the table. His lips morphed into a scowl, and metal hand pointed at the clear sack of blood wired to an EKG machine. They were performing a blood transfusion. He saw it happen a few years back, with another agent, but never a young child. He had to stop it. "Free her...Hook me up instead..." he swallowed down his plea, smoldering tears filmed over his eyes. His drumming heart was breaking into pieces as he listened to her pulse decrease in levels. "Don't let her die."

The director smirked coldly back at him, stroking his fingers through Avora's chopped brown locks. "I'm surprised with your resilience to the programming. I thought we made the alterations of your mind to feel nothing, but I guess we made a small error." He caressed the girl's face with a fatherly touch, and sighed calmly, "We have no intention of killing her, but perfecting this life into the new face of the new world order. You see, sometimes when the world falls into ruin, you have to tear the old foundations down and start rebuilding with the smallest of stones."

The Winter Soldier furrowed his eyebrows; he choked out a sob and narrowed his eyes at Avora.

"Avora is no ordinary stray, she is our salvation and carries the blood of our supreme leader." he smiled contently, wiping the tears off her cheeks. Then, he revealed the hidden truth, "This girl carries the bloodline of Red Skull...His granddaughter...The sole heir of HYDRA."

All color from his flushed skin drained when the shocking revelation slashed against his heart. His knees wobbled, balance unsteady and he crashed to his knees, and felt everything dissolve around him.

The orphaned child he saved from bitterness of the cold was now a treasured memory; he knew within the coming hours, she would surrender her humanity fully to HYDRA...A emotionless vessel to fulfill her grandfather's reckoning of inhumane crimes and destruction.

He lowered his head, and listened to her weakened voice carry thorough out the room as she repeated the words the director whispered into her ear.

"...Hail...Hail HYDRA."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

* * *

"Hail HYDRA..."

He blankly stared at the muzzle of the automatic in front of to hear the safety unlock and the discharge of the trigger, he tried to desperately to block out the images of her ashen face as she was fading before his bleary eyes. It was rebirth. Her life was draining up of her and replaced by HYDRA's poison-the collection blood samples of Red Skull. She was becoming a reincarnation of her debased grandfather, her innocent mind would become alerted into his preserved thoughts and her existence and memories erased. It was a parasite infecting her, eating into the imprinted codes of her DNA strands and configuring into a morbid abomination. A soulless vessel without the understanding of emotion and reason.

"On your feet, soldier," said the director pacing away from the table, his polished shoes tapping on the cement flooring. His fingers snapped, and a stool wheeled before him. Elegantly, he sat down, and extended out his hand, grabbing the Winter Soldier's jaw, and pressing his fingers hard into the bone, almost separating the young man's lips. His deep grayish blue eyes narrowed with a riled expression. "Your compliance is the key reason why this child is being harmed. You are the primary fault of her pain." The Soldier felt his strength beginning to slip. "You were ordered to stand down from the mission. The girl was supposed to be seized by Rumlow. Not you. I can see that your levels of defiance towards following my orders have been breached since our last session when I gave you orders to avoid human contact."

"I didn't mean to disobey," the Winter Soldier returned with a shed of hesitation in his low voice. His eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes watered as the pressure tightening in his jaw bones. His thoughts were addled, as much as his emotions that had been crammed inside a space of his heart. A new feeling arose within him, as he managed to spare a glance at Avora, tears rolled steadily down his smooth face. He wouldn't stand for cruelty and enslavement. Not when it came to his friend. "I couldn't watch her die. Not out there-Not in here."

"I didn't mean to disobey," the Winter Soldier returned with a shed of hesitation in his low voice. His eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes watered as the pressure tightening in his jaw bones. His thoughts were addled, as much as his emotions that had been crammed inside a space of his heart. A new feeling arose within him, as he managed to spare a glance at Avora, tears rolled steadily down his smooth face. He wouldn't stand for cruelty and enslavement. Not when it came to his friend. "I couldn't watch her die. Not out there-Not in here."

"You think it's going to become an easy way out for her? There is no freedom. She belongs to HYDRA. You belong back in the ice. I hate to do this, but it the only way to restore you back into our weapon." The director's face came closer, an inch, as he lowered his grip, and enclosed his left hand over the other man's jugular, feeling his unsteady pulse. He shook his head slowly, before adding. "The world is changing, people need to coward in fear, and you are the symbol of our power. You are perfection, controlled by our ideals of rebuilding new foundations of a birthing world, and turning the old one into ruins. We can't allow you to become human again. There is too much at stake."

The assassin gritted his teeth, viciously.

"Don't waste your strength on me. We both know that you won't have victory. You're not a soldier." The director's eyes gleamed with unsavory hue of blue. "No memory of your true existence. Tortured and imprisoned in a reanimation chamber, maybe you should consider your choice of fighting against my authority. It's not just your life I hold in my hands. Are you human enough to make the sacrifice and give her freedom while your blood spills on this floor? My men are just watching for the order to pull their triggers. All it takes is one word to become the difference maker."

The Winter Soldier's eyes grew heavy with the film of tears. For some reason those cold words felt worse than a wielding knife jabbing into his heart. "I can be a monster, destroy lives and make children scream."

He snapped his fingers, and the assistant squeezed Avora's arm, getting her to yelp in pain. "That's a devolving sound of your failure-Listen to her cries for mercy. Tell me if you feel them?" He scowled, twisted, and settled his darken eyes on the rattled asset.

The Winter Soldier wrenched his eyes away, as much as he could, and fastened his lips into a hard grimace.

"I..." His cracked voice pitched up and then faded in his throat. "I don't want to see her in pain...Make it stop." He snapped his eyes down, bowing his head and sucking in deep breaths, trying to regain his composure.

As he lowered his fists to his sides, he positioned his body into stance of subornation-one armored knee pad pressed against the cement, before clamping his eye lids shut to darkened out the brightness of the room.

"Make it stop." he snarled. "She won't survive. She's not strong enough." He hissed while listening to her shrills of pain erupting from the shadows cloaking over the table.

"Tell me what you're feeling?" the director instructed, releasing his hand from the asset's clammy neck.

"I feel pain," the Winter Soldier told him, timidly. He couldn't suppress the invasive throb harrowed in his heart. He jerked his head to the side, his long, disheveled strands draped over his glistening blue eyes. "I feel her pain." he slurred, trying to clear his vision to focus.

"Showing emotions towards a child is a weakness that cannot be tolerated." the director affirmed, standing upright to his full height, and shaking his head as he looked down at his defective weapon. "HYDRA spent years trying to perfect you to suppress emotion and obedience. You were created execute our orders and termite the movement of resistance."

He smugly sneered, holding out his hand as an agent stepped forth and placed a metal rectangular box into his palm. "You are the nightmare that was birthed in HYDRA's shadow. The perfect assassin. A cold blooded killer. No emotion. No compassion. No reason. Nothing about you makes you remotely human. You're a weapon-A gun that we store away until hunting season."

The Winter Soldier blanched aback; feeling the cold venom of his superiors words seep into his hollow bones. "You're an only a frail glimpse of a man. A calibrated machine. You don't need a name. Even through at one point in your worthless life, you had one, but you don't remember it. Not anymore. To HYDRA, you're our loyal pet-The Asset."He intoned. "Your little friend and you are going to be spending a cold and dark future together."

The director smirked, virulently. "Yes. You know understand your existence, and you will not fight."

Surrender or watch her die?

Now, the Winter Soldier had become acutely aware of the heavy thumping of boots moving closer to him. He was frozen. His chin tucked down to his sternum and his hands laden over the floor. Hearing the muffled cries, he lifted his head slightly, just enough to catch a glance at her trembling underneath the flickering bulb shining over her ivory skin. Just enough to see the tears roll down her cheeks when the serum pumped into her tiny, fragile arms.

"Avora," he whimpered, soft and his voice was collapsing. "I will not fight you," he mustered up enough will power to speak in a murmur, which was unfamiliar against his tongue. He felt malady of deficiency streaming in his veins. It was a niggling sense of humanity that had been churning and prompting him to fight since he entered the room and stared at her small body strapped to the operating table. He wanted to scream, fight and break bones, but he couldn't gamble with her life. He couldn't ignore the innervation of being human. He turned, fighting against the waves of animosity flaring in him. He turned, and then glared back at the director with a malefic gleam of smelted azure and he never shifted his eyes.

Rollins ambled quietly from behind the Winter Soldier, and yanked at his arms, twisting the muscle and metal plating, and then cuffed them against the muscled planes of his back, disabling his wrists against reinforced titanium.

"Get up," he barked aloud, gruff and ugly. He pulled at the long strands, and forced the Asset's head up to stare at the girl once more. "That brat," he whispered lowly, his breath heated over the other man's scruffy jaw. "Is going to become my new play toy. She and I are going to have so much fun training while you're locked in the ice box." he grunted, cracking his knuckles.

"Get him out of my sight," the director ordered waving his hand with a dismissive gesture. He shuffled his feet back to the table, and patted his hand over Avora's paled shoulder. "It will be okay princess," he allayed with a fathering tone, smiling falsely down at the child. "It's almost over."

"My...Snow... Angel..." Avora choked up, tears streamed over the edges of her quivering lips. She turned her neck, and gazed at the Winter Soldier with her fearful caramel eyes. Her hand lifted up slightly, as she tried to reach out for him. The assistant took grip of her arm ruthlessly, squeezing on the frail muscle tight enough to terminate the blood circulation against the bruising flesh. "Don't forget about me..." she wheezed out, before her eyes dimmed and the effects of a serum began to arise in her blood. She drifted into an unconscious state.

His blue eyes were dark and intrepid and dismay surged through his system as he thrashed against Rollin's broad muscles locked over his torso.

Pain was still sharp in the isolated sections of his body, lingering and jolting spasms from his operations, and realignment of his bones in various spots of his ribs and shoulder blades, he gritted, viciously.

His vision swam into violent crimson. The reemergence of the Winter Soldier programming was beginning to take hold of his mind. "I will kill you of you!" he lashed out, snarling like caged wolf. His teeth bared and eyes livid, struggling against Rollins to retain movement.

"Rollins," the director snapped, firm and direct. "Take him down. I will not have this child become a witness of bloodshed."

"Let go of me!" the Winter Soldier growled to Rollins, feeling all eyes locked on him. Guns were loaded with a heavy dosage of sleeping agent.

"You're unstable, soldier." Rollins shot back, twisting his right arm, and listening to the bones crack. "You've been out of cryo for too long. It's made you defective." he snorted, cursing up his throat and scolding the situation.

"Avora," The Winter Soldier whispered, brokenly to himself. The thought of her dying on the table made his heart thud to a halt in his chest. He knew the horrors of HYDRA, he was forced to watch young girl become slaves to torture in a dark place of underground Russia-The Red Room.

He saw the corruption of the mind, and trained with a lethal red haired operative -she carried venom in her blood and destroyed her enemies, ruthless and merciless with efficient methods that had been branded over her skin. She was deadly as a spider-and trapped men in her weaves of deception.

After he accomplished his final mission in Odessa before going back into reanimation stasis. He saw the agent in the mountains and pulled the trigger on his target-he missed and watched the slug enter her when she dived in front of engineer and took the bullet. He knew she wasn't dead-just wounded with a permanent reminder shaped and marred over her compromised pale skin.

Blinking the potent memory of the red-haired woman in black combat gear, the Winter Soldier tore his eyes away from the guns aimed at his chest. Something sparked within him, maybe it was the true man hidden behind the semblance of the killer or maybe it was Avora's love towards him. Whatever it was, he felt his feral strength returning,his heart pounding and searing defiance fighting the hands pinning him down.

For the first time in years, he cracked a ghostly hint of a warm, human smile. He looked at her, with his burning light blue eyes, and growled harshly, "She will have freedom." he screamed at the top of his lungs, and threw his head back. "I'll make sure of that!"

Rollins clamped his hand over the assassin's mouth from behind, barricaded the words, and ceasing the protests. The Winter Soldier bit down on his leather gloved fingers, gnashing his teeth into the bone with much force as he could muster. Rollins yelped under his breath and whipped his hand away and spewed out a jumble of curses. Seizing the opportunity of his opponent's distraction, the Soldier bashed his head into the agent's skull, hard and listened to the cartilage of his nose breaking.

He spun around, jumped a few inches off the ground, and rammed his boots into Rollin's chest, violently.

The agent fumbled backwards and collided to the ground with a loud thud; and he shifted his blue eyes to the table and with all his strength, he broke the handcuffs, allowing pieces to scatter over the floor. He moved quickly, vaulting and flipping over tables, and bashing heads until his feet smacked on a steel crate, and head lowered. He glared at the director with murderous indent, and seethed in Russian, "She is coming with me..."

The director nodded, gesturing to hostile "Okay. Take her. You won't get far." he warned, hiding a twisted smirk.

The Winter Soldier scuffed at his words, and jumped off the crate, and landed gracefully at the table side, and caressed Avora's small hand with his metal fingers. He wanted to hear her voice again. "Avora," he whispered, bringing her limp hand to his face, pressing his lips atop of her knuckles. He held a kiss there, feeling her veins pulse against the softness of his warm, trembling mouth.

Seconds later, he heard a defeating sound of a gun sounding off, and saw splotches of blood painting over the floor. His hand collided with the floor and he could only thrash and growl as his right arm suddenly grew numb. He had been shot.

"You have disappointed me, soldier," snarled the director. He reached down and tangled his hand into the Winter Soldier's long hair, and rammed his face into the floor, hard enough to make him expel out, dark red that had replaced saliva.

He tugged on the long stands hard, bringing the young man's head up, before slamming his forehead back into the floor again. "You are going back into the chair and your mind will be wiped clean. I will go so deep that you won't even remember how to talk."

The Winter Soldier lifted his metal hand, trying to grasp Avora's arm. "No, she needs me..."he coughed, his body was dragged over the floor and right arm throbbed as the bullet sunk deeper into the tensed muscle of his bicep, "I made a promise. A promise!" he managed to growl out a strangled breath, his voice fading as he felt his body becoming forcefully hauled up and strapped into the steel, electronic probing chair, before he cried out erratic bursts of pain.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

* * *

There was no warmth blanketing the dimly lit room, Madame HYDRA rigidly leaned her slender frame against the wooden door with no flush of contentment tinged on her paled and cut-stone cheekbones. She crossed her leather heeled boots ankle to ankle as she stood motionless and patient.

Her long green eyes draped over her trim shoulders as she shot a forward and intense glower at the dark figure sitting at the table across from her view-Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker.

His chiseled features veiled by shadow as he settled a glass of red wine on the flawless mahogany. He gave her total disregard, rejection. It unnerved her. Tensing out a breath, Madame HYDRA stiffened her lips into a grimace of displeasure she kept her cold eyes trained on him and began her report.

"I have done research on the files you have been keeping hidden from my eyes, but I hold not regression towards your methods when it comes to getting satisfied results." she digressed with an unsavory voice. "Little girls that are alone in this world become the most ambitious and most aggressive ...That child holds our redemption for failing HYDRA. She will live, die and live again. There will be no exceptions of having a good life. Her life has already been coded since the moment her worthless mother conceived."

Strucker had killed so many people. Stories had been written in his victim's blood which he smeared on the crumbling walls. His methods of interrogated were brutal-broken necks, crashed ribs and slit throats. Even though he dressed formal and elegant in her presence, she sensed his nefarious and carnal nature; he wasn't afraid to show it to his captives. He revealed no sentiment.

Their eyes met, a hard an unforgiving steel-gray that seemed to penetrate through her layers. "You realize what is necessary to do now my dear," he said twisting his lips into a smug grin. "Everything must entwine. We can have no more loose threads. As a former benefactor of the Schutzstaffel I have watched orphaned children become monsters overnight. All it takes is simple bargain for their freedom and they obey have command that pours out from your mouth." he addressed coldly, squeezed his leather fingers into a tight gloved fist. "They are primitive creatures with young minds...Children sometimes become the most deadly weapons when used with the right motivation. I have had quite a few encounters with reckless children who became witnesses of their own parents' murders when HYDRA had to level a few towns in order to recreate our imperium. After all it was I you gave you a new life in the high ranks as our newest lieutenant."

"How could I forget your compassion towards my life, Herr Strucker." Madame HYDRA returned through clenched teeth, and then clicked her spiked heels fervently towards the table, and then flipped opened the front of brown file with fluttered of stained paper.

"When Zola replicated the formula that was supposed to have been extracted from Captain America's veins to create to evolution of super-soldiers, it meant failure. We were unable to retrain the American soldier in our prisons, but we tested the new compound that our doctor created by the stolen notes and samples that our agents collected back in Brooklyn. One the months passed, all those men became mutated and destroyed-abominations from muscle growth that tore their bodies apart. The others disagreed with the serum and their weak immune systems rejected the poison and killed them. I was there watching their internal organs burst -heart attacks, strokes suffocation." she paused, and cuffed her hands behind her back, drawing in her boots close together.

"With our failures HYDRA we were able to reach success when the Soviets gave us funding for the experiments. In result with our alliance to Russia, they gave us a gift -You remember...The young American soldier who followed Captain America around. The one asset we both shared when his mutilated body was dragged out the icy ravine. Zola operated on him, sawed off the marred bones of his left arm and injected with the new batch of serum. He was the first of many to become perfected in the eyes of our family, but he wasn't worthy to carry on the mantle of HYDRA, no, only a blood heir could have that rite to control the ideals left by our deceased leader." she growled vehemently up her throat.

Dragging her long nails against the wood, she had resumed in her conversation with arrogant and ruthless former Nazi trapped in her daunting gaze of molten green. "We need to talk about the heir of our leader and the extraction of her diseased and imperfect blood that carries the essence of her mother. We have already begun the cleansing procedures, blood draining and injections, but she will have her mind erased within the next few days before we ship her off to the old ruins of Castle Zemo."

There was a piece of paper inserted with a small note in German clipped over a photograph of a young Russian had gentle brown eyes filled with security and warmth; long and curly golden hair that cascaded over her shoulder, and her face was pale with dark blemishes of abuse smudged over her cheeks. She had been condemned to live in the shadows, and raise her children under the run. Russian was only half of her existence; her father was born in Moscow, but her mother Gisela was born in a darkness of Germany-an orphaned street girl raised in the void of hatred and poverty. She had been marked as a slave when the men in black coats scarred her left arm with a forbidden symbol that etched red over the ivory was branded her as a prize to the senseless and inhuman leader of a terrorist organization called HYDRA. The equalizer of human weakness and order.

Corrupted to serve her master, the young girl became his object of desire. Gisela obeyed every command he spoke, and didn't flinch when his black leather gloved hands caressed over her scarred arms. It was enslavement, and she had become bounded to his words and orders. After months of being locked in an isolated chamber, with little light to remind her that she wasn't a captive in hell; Gisela had conceived an heir that shared his bloodline and altered DNA strands that constructed merciless power.

After the leader was murdered by an American soldier who was stronger and America saved the world from leveled desolation; she escaped on the train with liberated and wounded Russian soldiers, erased her identity, and married a farmer before she gave birth to her baby girl -Alanta.

"Do you remember the night we recovered what rightfully belong to us?" Madame HYDRA issued, coldly, pulling out a torn photography of a small infant. "When we heard of the news of Gisela giving birth to a healthy daughter...We weren't so merciful and instead leaving a parting gift during that special time, we gave her something else to make her remember who pulled the strings..."

_It had been a cold, unforgiving and harsh December night; a masked assassin clothed in black invaded their home. He was silent with his attack, his methods elusive, and his eyes, a ghostly blue without emotion or humanity. He was a programmed drone for HYDRA, a face of terror and darkness, and a symbol of death. It was a terrifying moment, Gisela had felt like a little rabbit ensnared in the intense gaze of a hungry wolf._

_He never let her breathe when as held her three-month baby girl in her arms, shielding her tiny form from a metal hand reaching to grab the wailing baby. She knew he was ordered by the last remaining superiors of HYDRA, and his objective was her daughter. The assassin wrapped his metal hand around her throat, squeezing until her youthful features changed into a hue of faint purple. She tried to fight, clawing at his against with her free hand; but he managed to cut off her airways, and twist the bones into her neck. With a violent crack; he fractured and dislocated the bones, and listened to her wheeze out fading breaths._

_"Leave my daughter alone." Gislea pleaded, struggling to muster out a few words as she looked into his icy blue eyes obscured by disheveled brown hair. His wore the semblance of a young man; his menacing face was chiseled and shrouded with confusion. She choked out another breath. "Her life is precious and doesn't belong to HYDRA. She deserves freedom...Freedom."_

_"Freedom?" he questioned, unsure of the word as it ragged up his strained throat. His pale blue eyes suddenly became distant, and his fingers unclasped from her bruised neck._

_He released his choke hold, and watched her eyes roll back into their sockets. She died before her body impacted the floor; the baby slipped out from the laden arm, but he scooped up the distressed child, and looked down at the life withering in his arms. He blinked, and just stared at the baby. His lips hinged shut, and his dulled blue eyes scanned the the doors opened and his superior marched over hardwood, and he automatically handed the baby into the man's extended arms, gently, and then returned intrepidly back into the shadows._

Sneering as the grim memory dissolved in her mind, Madame HYDRA swiped a glass wine, and delicately took a sip. "The Winter Soldier has proven to us many times that his loyalty lies within the heart of the HYDRA. He isn't weak or defective like the others who had failed to reach our goals of reformation." She halted in her words. It brought her to a pause. Pause. A moment of thoughtless control of emotion. A falter in her system. A hint of teetering closer to the edge. "Our asset has shown soon the breakage of his emotional barriers with the child. She feels security with him...I know that they both share a connection. She has disrupted Soldier's tolerance for human weakness."

"Weakness is necessary when evolving humanity to new order." Stucker's hoarse German accent encroached around her. The Baron rose from his seat, and hauntingly advanced closer to her. His face was still hidden, but a gleam of his glass monoclonal reflected against the flickers of firelight. He spoke once more to her, with a hint of spite ragging from his throat. "The child must not be considered as an asset to us, but a blood miracle."

Madame HYDRA glared at him, jaw tensing. She couldn't contain her bottled up disgust. "What is your command?" She asked." Do we remove the child from this place and allow her to avoid the final stages of her rebirth or do we send her to Castle Zemo where she will be trained as a young operative recruit?" She growled and leveling her inscrutable glower at him. "What is your decision?" she snapped back.

"Assimilation." he replied calmly, grinning amusingly at her. "The girl must learn obedience before training. We need to wipe her and erase the images of her family. That is the only way she can fully respond to our commands." He shuffled his feet, and placed his gloved hand atop of the folder. "It is a method of discipline, but once we have removed her existence and her willpower has been broken, then she will be completely ours to control."

Madame HYDRA returned with a curt of nod, as she turned to leave. She glanced over her shoulder and regally issued out her response, "As you command, Herr Stucker."

* * *

A dark line of maroon trickled over his full lips. He felt every slap against his rugged and ashen skin. Every slash of hardened rage penetrate through his bones. It was a method of torture, pure and effective, and it was brutal and unrelenting.

His body jostled against the pounding impact of gloved hands embedding into his jaw. He felt lost in the weaves of hatred. His murky vision flared hot crimson underneath his tensed eyelids; trying to back while blood smeared over his lips and contrasting the ivory hue of his blemished skin; trickling aimlessly down his throat until the trail reached the graven muscles of his heaving chest. A myriad of straggly patterns lanced over his crescent scars, burning the fading marred wounds with sickening warmth.

His lungs collapsed as jolts of thrones of tantalizing pain spread in his system like live wire. It felt like the veins underneath his tightening knuckles melted through the skin. He swallowed and trembled against the hard chair, the coldness of steel from a gun caressed over his pulsing temple, brushing the matted strands of his brown hair back as he caught the familiar and encroaching whiff of lead.

* * *

_Long Island USA, December 1991_

_Snow cascaded over the ice slick streets. The distance glow of sunlight reflected over the vacant windows. It had become unexpected and unforgiving white out. Inside a black Mercedes sedan, Howard Stark gripped the steer wheel firmly, his dark brown eyes focused on the road ahead. His skin grew clammy underneath his leather gloves as the car drove pass heaps of snow barricading the sidewalks. Given the proper traction on the tires, he easily broke through the white curtain of heavy flakes._

_He was barely conversing with his wife sitting in the passenger seat, telling him about the awards their son Tony received, but he was a captive of the dark secrets lodged in his heart. He felt the harrowing sense of danger crawling in the marrow of his bones. Inside the trunk was a prototype instrument he designed for one single purpose. It was tracking beckon, a device to found someone lost and buried in the frozen wasteland of subzero temperatures. His life's work was all configured into the small piece, because he made a promise to a friend. He intended to keep that promise._

_He was barely focused, smiling at her words, and pretending to listen. The windshield wipers had grown to become a distraction, but his wife's voice lulled him to take his eyes off the road for a second when she interrupted his concentration._

_"Howard, darling, are you even listening to a single word I am telling you?"_

_He nodded, curtly, "I am very proud of Tony." he answered, simply with a faint smile. "It won't be long until he's running the show..."_

_"Howard honey is everything alright?" she asked, concern gleamed in her eyes. The spotlight turned red. The brakes screeched over the layer of snow. It as an impasse, tension was growing thick in the air between them. "Darling what is it?"_

_Howard opened his mouth to answer her, his dark eyes focused ahead and fingers clutched the steering well. He took a moment to reconsider his choice of words, but he knew that wasn't much time to give her the full explanation... He sighed, "I have been working on a new project. Classified. It will ensure a better future for Tony. There is nothing more I want for him than that, Maria." He swallowed down hard, "I made a blueprint of an instrument to help our friends in the shadows find hope again, but as long as this idea must be kept hidden I fear that HYDRA will strike at us."_

_Maria furrowed her eyebrows, "HYDRA is dead, Howard. Agent Carter told me that the former members no longer exist. We raked everything from the marked locations. There was nothing left for us to recover."_

_"That is what scares me, Maria." He countered, feeling the blood flow in his fingers stop against the brush of coldness. "This instrument in the wrong hands could destroy humanity if it becomes used in the wrong hands. We need to keep everything underground and leave Tony in the dark about my mistakes."_

_He tore his eyes from the stoplight vigil and frowned as he met her gaze. "I'm sending you and our son away from Long Island until I know that everything is secure-"_

_"Howard?"_

_Without a second, Howard felt his heart thud to a complete stop against his chest. He hitched out a breath, and feel into a trance as a tall, dark and hooded figure emerged from the curtains of fleck white. It was phantasm of winter. Howard couldn't tell if it was a man stalking methodically closer to the vehicle's range. The man stopped only a few feet away from the held a rocket launcher, angling the muzzle with the car-with no time to brace for the bullet, Howard interlocked his fingers with Maria's dainty hand, and said his silent prayers._

_The weapon sounded off with a loud 'CHOOM' and the car exploded into roaring flames. Metal and bone melted as screams erupted from the violent inferno. The ghost stood there, watching the destruction consume everything in his obscured pale blue eyes. He didn't budge a muscle, it was almost like he had become frozen and immunized to watching shards of glass rain over the pavement and the scent of charred flesh permeated the air. His long leather coat billowed in the snow squalls, and he moved slowly to his target. His wolfish glower revealed to sentiment to the victims encased with flames._

_For a long moment of listening to the screeching metal framework of the vehicle combustion; he maneuvered to the back, and rammed a gloved fist into the black fogged glass. Metal fingers coiled with the graphite a pensive expression, he looked at the damage he pale blue eyes vacant without emotion, dark strands of hair twirled against his forehead, as he recoiled his hand aback, and lifted the prize of his master out of the blaze._

_His eyes narrowed slightly, as he breathed against the hard muzzle styled mask covering the lower half of his face. He stared, just stared at the skeletons of Howard and Maria Stark. He flesh hand tried to reach for the bodies, he wanted to touch the molten flesh because he sensed that he knew the driver, but then he received his orders to return to his master._

_Turning around, his combat boots crunched over the glass, and he stuffed the tube case inside his coat, and vanished into the snowfall._

_He never looked back._


	14. Chapter 14

**Part 2**

**A Fracture Through Time**

**Chapter 14**

* * *

Moscow, Russia, December 23rd

He never listened to them. He didn't want to interfere with the conversions of his superiors. He could've killed them all if he wanted to. It was tempting as he trained his pale blue eyes on Baron Wolfgang Strucker standing behind the desk in the vast room with triangular shaped windows streaming gray light over the metal beams craved into the hollow walls. The man was sadistic and mortally insane. He believed in evolution of humanity and was optimist when it came do dividing the balance of order and chaos. His bloodline was German and purified for HYDRA. Before he had accepted the chance to restore his own failures with the alliance of Red Skull, he was trained with the SS and observed the weakness of his prisoners. He was ruthless and hungry for true power. His disturbing train of thought could wrench any man's heart. His mind worked like an interface programmed, with every detail cut into halves for detecting truth.

It had been a method he used during the interrogation sessions, an instrument of death that harbored the weaken victims of his brutality to stare into his deaden gray eyes when he pulled the trigger. His name was engraved in the lifeless corpses he tossed into the flames and erased their existence as the smoke cleared from the skies. Death was his made deals with demons in moral flesh granted him power over the ranks, however, to earn respect for his leader, he had to cut a few bodies with lead, not his prisoners, but men he once considered comrades during his elusive operations in the shadows.

The Winter Soldier never questioned Strucker. He delivered the instrument he retrieved from the car wreckage, and moved in hushed and mechanical strides to the window. He leaned his intimating stature against the glass, arms folded and eyes narrowed. Two men in white coats and black leather boots stood in front of the desk, sweat dotted their brows when they each stole a glance at the motionless assassin's shadow darkening over the granite floor. He flicked his eyes up, glinting with unnerved intensity, light reflected in his blue irises, mirroring their wary gazes with ice as his jaw set into a sharp clenched. He never spoke to the scientists, Strucker's pack of fumbling and controlled lab rats were always timid around his presence. One look of his changeless blue eyes left them haunted, he knew how to penetrate deep within them, and make their hearts shutter. He was the lone wolf and they were just scavengers, feeding off of scraps he left behind for them. He straightens his posture up at bit, and smirked darkly. He listened to his superior's iniquitous voice, glancing at his commander flipping through documents scattered over the desk.

"Impressive," Strucker said. He lifted up the tube case into the clutch of his gloved hands, and smirk twisted his lips as he took a step back. He appraised the work of the assassin sternly. Another moment passed as he tapped his fingers absently over the case. A slew of his arm suddenly cloaked over the item protecting it from the caress of daylight. "The situation overseas is about to endure changes than anyone has never anticipated. They were on the verge of recovering ancient relics. I've cursed them a dozen times for interfering with our future. Now, we will have the advantage of leveling their systems and rebuilding the world in our image." He twisted the cap off, and carefully slid out the roll of blueprints. His eyes lowered as he scanned the details fervently, mumbling coherent words in German, calculating the equations racking in his disciplined mind. "Our sources have sent information regarding the known location of the wreckage. Once Stark's instrument becomes constructed, it will create new order."

"The body has encased in the icy waters for years, how will we restore the damaged tissue?" One of the scientists asked. He was concerned with the aftermath of the discovery. "No flesh can withstand that degree of cold-"

"You are forgetting about what stands in front of you, doctor." Struker responded, and he vaguely gestured at his hand to the Winter Soldier. "Recreation always restores the weak. Armin Zola perfected the serum after countless procedures with test subjects. Failures to the name of HYDRA. Instead of storing his knowledge, he created a perfected substance that shared the same formula that was meant to by ours, if certain loose ends didn't escape from our eyes. No matter, we developed new weapons with each injection. Some men died horrible deaths in the operating room, but one good soldier withstood all the pain, injections and became submissive to us without the escalation of his defiance... The young man was butchered; mind altered into a programmed machine, which of course Zola rewired with the stages of mind swiping. I don't think people feel comfortable around here, knowing that we have a ghost looming in the shadows. He is perfection. His body had withstand the cold because of all he is called the Winter Soldier."

What he just spoke was degrading to hear. The tension in the room was a choking haze tightening in his throat; HYDRA treated him like a puppet. The Winter Soldier lowered his arms to his sides, the mechanical and screeching noises of the shifting plates made the men in white shiver as an eerie chill permeated in the dead space between them. Despondent the firm set of his broad jaw and hard look in his paled eyes displayed a simple indication of his unpredictable and carnal nature. One scientist spoke trying to ease the dangerous aura pulsating from the ghostly figure trapped in his unsettling gaze. "If your super-soldier is perfection why do you need the other one to become extracted from the ice?"

Strucker looked at him. He sense the resistance in the other man well enough to detect the uncertainty welled in his brown eyes. "Let me tell you a story that mother told me back in the old country. It's about risk and death." He descended haughtily from the steps, nearing the man that questioned his ambitious mind.

"There were two birds sitting on a branch, both of them were strong and fearless...Brothers." he snickered, with a devilish gleam in his gray eyes. "Then, a cat climbed up the tree, a threat to their lives. One fought the cat off, pecking and clawing at the creature's face, but the cat was clever and swiped its paw at the bird, breaking its left wing. The other bird attack with defense, shielding his wounded brother, only to have his right wing broken. The cat knew their weakness, and went in for the kill-but the birds put up a fight and in the end they all fell out of the tree."

"What is the meaning of that story?" the other scientist asked, shifting uncomfortable under the Winter Soldier's daunting gaze.

"It is a simple answer," Strucker said, lowering his hand to his side, and rubbing a finger over his sidearm. "The birds represent order and nobility... While the cat is chaos. When each fight a battle on the high level of power, the end results become deadly, but cats always land on their feet." he chimed, quickly removing his pistol, and aiming the muzzle at the scientist ."It's a story that doesn't make sense of logic, but I like to use it as a distraction before I pull the trigger. It also helps me erase certain errors. The world is collapsing into spiraling void of chaos, and if hope is lost and it became a very dark place."

"So why do you need the America soldier?" the other man questioned, his eyes locked on the gun as he almost swallowed his tongue.

"That is a good question," Strucker said, he stiffened his jaw and undid the safe lock of his gun. "Imagine all the enemies lives we can lid once we change up the mind of America's hero; both him and our friend over there," he pointed to the Winter Soldier. "They both served in the Armed Forces together. Best friends since childhood, but sadly our toy soldier has no recognition of his past. According to Zola's notes, he doesn't even know the name written on his dog tags; including his date of birth. He is a nameless man, hollow and obedient to my commands. A loyal attack dog, who fetches what I order him to retrieve. He never questions, no, he just obeys."

He snapped his fingers, and the brainwashed assassin responded, advancing down the steps, his broad expanse of armored shoulders rolled as he thumped his heavy boots, with an intimating swagger, and then stood at Strucker's right side. "Very good, Solider," he gave the younger man a pleasing nod. "Now, I want you to kill the man who has defiled HYDRA." He placed his gun into the metal hand, and pushed down on the fingers, enclosing them over the weapon. "One bullet in the head, and another in the chest. You have ten seconds."

"Wait-"

The Winter Soldier lifted his bionic arm, chrome alloy glared in his target's eyes, and he pulled back on the trigger, discharging the bullet. His blue eyes became suddenly unhinged with a ghoulish stare, and he watched the bullet enter into the man's forehead, just staring at the line of blood dripping from the bridge of his nose, and lips. The other man jumped a few steps back in a sharp gasp, the Soviet assassin, smirked d ominously, a murderous scowl became a semblance over his chiseled face, and his eyes hardened with morbid satisfaction of his kill. With another clap of thunder ripped through the deafening silence in the air and the body was struck with a bullet in the left side of the chest.

He looked at the lifeless body, his eyes dense and vacant, staring at the splotch of red leaking through the white lab coat. "Enough," Strucker ordered from behind him. The rattled and alive scientist shook in his boots, clamping his hand over his mouth and he tore his eyes away from the Winter Soldier to watch his friend's eyes roll into their sockets. The Baron tossed the tube case to the floor and shook his head. He glowered at the corpse with coldness in his gaze. "Remove the body and get to work." He pointed a gloved finger at the blueprints. "No mistakes this time. Unless you want to stare at your wife's grave."

The Winter Soldier took a step back, the tension heated his body. The scientist glared at Strucker, the German commander disregarded him with a threat welled in his gray eyes. "I want everything ready for the extraction. Remove all lingering failures." He ordered with a bit in his harsh tone. The man grimaced and placed his hand over the glazed eyes of his friend. The Baron smirked, cuffing his hands behind his back. "Imagine having two guns in the hands of HYDRA. So many things need to become rectified on American shores." He turned, and looked at the voiceless assassin; gun was still smoking in his metal hand. "You never fail to disappoint me...You can speak now."

"What is your command, Herr Strucker?" the Winter Soldier spoke, his raspy voice cracked, with ting of soft Russian ghosting from his neutral held lips. He stood straight, frozen as if he was suddenly turned into stone. His eyes looked forward, and jaw flexed when he caught a whiff of the spilled blood draining from the body in front of him. He never budged a muscle, unblinking and strictly pliant under his master's glare. He had been subjected to torture, his mind scarred with the high voltage they gave him before he had a chance to recover olden images of his past. He waited for orders, and carried each one out without a reason to question his inhumane masters of authority.

Struker leveled his eyes on the body with disgust written on his face, "Dispose this filth and report back to me. I have a new assignment for you. I want you to recover something for me in Odessa."

Listening to the spitefulness escalate in Strucker's sordid voice, obliged to follow his instructions, the Winter Soldier nodded quietly, "As you command, Herr Strucker." he responded with a blank expression, and in a swift motion, he advanced to the body, his boots created ripples in the pool of blood. The disheveled and paled faced scientist lurched back in terror, as he reached down his silver arm, grappling the neck of the corpse and started to drag the body across the floor and towards the doors.

"You're a human!" he screamed, enthralling the assassin to jerk in movement. The phantasmal shell of a man turned, and glared over his shoulder, darkened blue eyes held malice, and brown tresses veiled his emotionless face... "You have soul...A soul!"

"No...I don't." he snarled coldly, curling his lips into a viscous sneer, and continued his trek out of the room while leaving a blood trail.

A cold, and frightful chill swept through the room as the door slammed the moment he had disappeared into the shadows.

The scientist lowered his head in reverence for his friend and the butchered soul he'd watched pulled the trigger. "What is in Odessa?" he had to ask, dreading to listen to the answer escape from Strucker's cold lips.

The Baron hollowly reprimand, his words filled with empathy, "An engineer who owes HYDRA a debt."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

* * *

Samara ( Kuybyshev), Russia, 1991

The gun seized against his metal hand. The boy's hands clapped over his ears, but that wouldn't obstruct the noise. The trembling child, horrified and unsupported, fell to the floor in a wheeze as his frail body jostled in a thud. The thunderous crack of the bullet discharging had vibrated deep within the Winter Soldier's chest, wracking the bones of his tightening ribs as he heaved out a sharp breath. His ear drums altered to respond or dull with the aftershock waves of the firing shot. His darkened blue eyes landed on the fallen body of the older man.

The target of termination had been a former and elite member of the SS, a war criminal in hiding. He was a traitor and betrayer to the Black Order. He had been convicted for murderous and inhumane crimes against POW allied prisoners and young man sent to death camps. He was called "the angel of death" and it was irrelevant for his debased soul to sire future bloodlines -he was a butcher of lives- a slaughter that had no concept of feeling pain. This game of rebuilding his life was a cover up to hide the sins of his past, but he couldn't hide forever.

Another shot discharged from the scope rifle, untraceable slug pierced through the skin of the man's sheen forehead, and cut deep into his skull, the echoes of screams were sucked into the darkness as the bleak sounds of breath faded into dull silence. The world froze before the child's teary eyes. The acrid smell burnt, smoking and metallic gun powder crawled at the back of his throat. The Winter Soldier leered a step back, lowering his weapon to his side, and stared down and into the wells of innocence mirroring his deaden gaze.

"Don't move from this spot," he warned in a muffled voice, his lips curled into a frown against the cold graphite of his mask, but he felt himself pulling away as the intrusions of slovenly voices controlled his thoughts.

Breathing, he stared blankly at the boy through the streams of mussed brown hair hooding over his pale eyes. He didn't know how to react to emotions, the mournful cries ripping through the air. The clusters of voices told him to run away as he felt trapped and panicked with an aggressive growl. He never wanted to cause pain to the child. With one look of his ghostly blue eyes, he captured every detail of anguish shrouding over the child's pallid face, and saw tears before he felt the urges to vanish into the confines of shadow.

The boy just stood there looking blankly at him. He didn't belong to corpse lying in front of his tattered boots. He was an orphan, as slave who had been used to help the war criminal infiltrate borders without becoming detected by the USSR. His appearance was pathetic, thinned, gaunt and fallen cheeks smeared with dried maroon and filth. He had a mop of dirty blonde hair and his eyes tear filled eyes were the colors of seawater. He reminded the despondent and muted assassin of another blonde haired boy from the overlays of memories scrounging in his unconnected mind.

The Winter Soldier looked hard and wary at his torn and tattered clothing; it was barely enough to keep his disheveled body warm. He wasn't a target, but a liberated victim. Blinking, he withdrew an alarming step back, preparing to leave the apartment, but then the bookshelves was declining from the hinges, it seemed with bullets of the gun his target fired; sliced with the support bolts, silver and gold plates were beginning to crash hard, and the boy froze in shock-he had to do something. The boy didn't deserve death. Quickly, without any hesitation; he lunged in front of the shelves, lifted his metal arm, and pushed his weight against the wood threatening to the crush the child.

Releasing an eruption of screams. It had become a deafening wave of dullness in his ears. Desperately, with a hinge of hope, the boy ducked against him; burying his face into the leather of his armored jacket. It seemed refreshing to feel human touch. He felt the child's frail arms snake around his waist, using his body as an anchor to grasp as chaos distinguished the light into plumes of smoking gray. He spared a glance at the innocent latched against him, peering beyond the void of swirling crimson. He sensed an encroaching presence looming in the shadows of the room. Something dangerous and reeking with vengeance. It had always been a stale smell to inhale.

Involuntary, or with spastic urges of instinct, he whipped his head violently around, his blue eyes watered as tresses of his hair poked against his eyelids, and he shot a piercing gape through the clouds of dust that encased him. His mind functioned by commands, not with emotions. He couldn't stop his heart from thumping against his hollow felt beads of feverish sweat dripped from his brow, and lips curled into a tight grimace as he caught another smell wafting in the dense air-gasoline-he knew that the target had a contingency plan to erase all evidence. Somewhere in the apartment was a firebomb. Daring his calculated and eyes to stare at the doorway, he met the cold and dear eyes of another assassin. A female whom had been trailing his steps since his last attack in Zurich.

The woman intruder gave him only a glimpse of her presence, long curls with the tinge of blood red and sleek leather. She never exposed her eyes under the thick shadows, just pale skin and full lips that held a vacant smirk. He felt his muscles tense into a defensive stance, as her PSM pistol gleamed in the faint streaks of light. She aimed the muzzle of the gun directly at the boy's head. It was the prime target. Her finger threatened to pull the trigger down as she leaned against the door molding with patience of a cunning spider waiting to make her kill at the prey caught in the clustering weavers of her destruction.

She extended her arm, making the stiffness of her uniform hug over her lithe body. He wanted to throw his knife at her, wound, spill blood and destroy her before she twisted those red lips into a lethal expression. She was taunting him-looking at the boy with uncaring eyes. And she lips twisted into a sadistic smile. A devil's grin. "Hand over the brat," she demanded in Russian, narrowing her eyes to the child's white and smudged face. She face turned vicious, and teeth clenched. "He isn't your concern. He is nothing."

"He is not a target." The Winter Soldier growled, holding his lips firm under the mask. He punched through the wooden shelf, breaking pieces with the force of his iron fist, and through the planks aside. He created an obstruction between them. "He is not the mission!" he seethed aloud, and gravelly unyielding.

"It's not your game to play," the red haired woman hissed, with ire burning in her murderous green eyes. "Are you going to stand down or will I have to take both of you out?"

With one sharp thrust of his metal arm, the Winter Soldier seized the boy's emaciated shoulder, "Move," he hissed through clenched teeth, fumbling his steel fingers over the compartments of his uniform. He removed a sharp projectile, and threw it against the window planes, glass exploded and shards followed. He snarled, and fired his own weapon at her, but her reaction time was quick, and she dodged before the bullet skimmed over her exposed limb, tearing through the wood molding instead of flesh.

Then, he crouched down and wrapped his arms around the boy and the female watched as he carefully slipped his metal fingers through the boy's blonde hair, obviously comforting the child, and shielding the small body with his right arm as bullets sliced through the air. "Stay close," he murmured his blue eyes wide and manic. He stood there in the range of her shadow, undaunted and prepared to open fire with his sub-machine gun attached, and swinging loose against hip holster. His knife was still strapped to his thigh. Things were going to get dangerous very fast.

Kill…He thought with alarm, swiping his gun from the hostler with fast reflect and drawing the muzzle directly at her chest. No regret was trapped in his gaze. Taking a step back, he waited for her to fire; he kept his metal digits coiled over the weapon and shot a glance at the compromised window. Any injuries the child could sustain wouldn't be lethal, maybe a few gashes on the face and arms. Nothing deep and life threatening. "The boy is leaving with me. Fire at him and I will kill you," he warned with abrasive intent.

Smirking, the woman lifted her gun, and discharged a bullet, watching it penetrate through the boy's dangling leg. Listening to her young victim scream out in utter anguish as blood seeped from the gaping wound, and watching him squirm in frantic thralls against the Winter Soldier's chest, she took a step back; withdrawing from fire and said in clear Russian. "I'm not in the mood for negation." she said, no emotion in her harsh voice. "Now, hand over the brat and I will dispose of him."

"No, I won't! This boy is not a threat. He is an innocent. My orders were clear. I kill only the objectives." He entreated through clenched teeth as he placed the sobbing and injured child on the ground, before he lunged at her like a starving and rabid wolf and he wrestled the pistol away from her hands.

Growling loudly as he made his direct assault; he knocked her slender form to the floor, crushing her with his weight, and pinning her wiggling arm with the clasp of his metal hand. His face was dark, sweaty and monstrous as he looked down at him; mussed hair fell over her pale cheeks and hot breath against her lips. The cold glare he received from her was harsher than a bitter Russian winter. There was no trace of remorse or even recognition in those swirling pools of green just crimson and darkness. The colors of blood and ash.

"You can't kill an innocent. Children are victims of grief. Not of death." he executed, breathlessly.

She was as fierce and unyielding as he expected of her as he felt her fist in his armored torso hard enough to make him double forward. Once he was brought down lower, he felt the winding blow of her leather boot across the back of his neck. He found himself face down across the cold floor; slightly dazed with his vision swimming in spiraling pools of murky red.

"I kill because it's my way of surviving!" She snarled like a vicious, rabid wolf. Her blood pulsed faster inside her veins. She reached a hand down, and yanked at his long strands of hair. "You're disobeying an order…Soldier." Her voice suddenly less human, it almost had the tinning noise of robotic. She was a killing machine. "That boy is a target of operation. He must not live after this night. I have orders to destroy him…He is an asset of information. His body is useless, but his mind holds value once extracted."

"Pull the trigger on him and I will destroy you," The Winter Soldier returned; prying her hand away from his chest, at the moment he felt her knuckles dig into his ribs.

The woman smirked, ruefully. "Alright," she spoke in a cool manner, "Seems fair enough-"

She lifted her leg, coiling it around his shoulders. Violently she twisting her quad over his neck, pulling him close as she drew out a knife from her boots and held it against his throat.

"I'm not leaving empty handed."

She flicked the blade just enough to catch a trace of his blood. Then, she utilized her method of distraction. She squeezed her thigh against his neck, holding firm pressure as she tried to suffocate him. "Submit." She growled harshly in his ear. His response time was quick with reflex and hoisted her leg up, giving him an opening to slip through, and recoil backwards.

He straightened to his full height, pointing his gun at her, his seeped blue eyes revealed hardened fury as he felt his jaw tightened when mechanical instincts told him to pull the trigger. It would have been so damned easy to take her out seeing that she was an unnecessary distraction, but he also knew there was a bomb lodged in the apartment. "We can do this dance all night, but there is bomb in this place. Unless you want to die tonight, I suggest you clear out…"

She fumbled for her gun, and held it into a tight clutch, "How do I know that you're telling me the truth?" she gritted, her voice held the same urgency as his. "What proof do you have?"

He blocked out her words, and crouched down, slowly placing his hand over the boy's forehead. His flesh fingers quaked against feverish heat, and his face lax with confusion and ire. Feeling the need to comfort, he stroked his fingers through the drenched hair, tentative and unsure. It felt so familiar and yet unknown to him as he kept his palm across the boy's forehead. He blinked the water out of his eyes, noticing a paper, crinkled piece of paper sticking from the tattered pockets of the child's pants. Carefully, he pulled out the paper and looked down and hard at the name, like he was remembering something or rehashing old visions of ghosts: Timothy Aloysius Cadwallander Dugan.

Dum Dum Dugan.

He broke his lips apart against the hard graphite, and breathed out, "The boy is now my mission." he growled, leveling his steely blue eyes at her. "Follow me…You will be wishing you hadn't."

Lowering her gun, she nodded absently; and then she turned to leave through the door. Then, she twisted around and said, "Next time our paths cross, I will be putting a bullet into you."

He said nothing. He didn't look back at her. He tore his focus into the boy's teary and yet, pleading eyes looking up at him. Pulling the mask off his slick jaw, and pressed his lips together to ease the stiffness, and then he asked a simple question; easy for the child to answer. "How do you know this man?"

The boy swallowed down the sobs clogging his throat, it was almost too painful for him to speak, but somehow he managed to struggle of breath, "He's my… Grandfather."

"Grandfather?" The Winter Soldier gasped, his blue eyes widened, as he clutched the boy in his grasp, and stalked towards the window. This asset, the victim and child wasn't a threat to HYDRA, but a lost boy who had been stolen from his family. The human side of him-the ghost of a good soldier James Barnes- he wanted to return the boy to his home. To bring the child back his grandfather and to the soldier's friend.

He was going on a journey… Back into the past.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

* * *

_The landscape was devoid of life. It had been barren and cold, high peaks of snow top mountains shrouded over the icy passageways, and the sky was a canvas of pitch black mixed with tints of navy blue._

_There were no specks of light, no stars just cascades of snowflakes falling over the frozen ground as if white curtains covered the land. Familiarity took hold of him, as he trudged against the whirling tempest, his heavy boots sank in the snow, as he staggered to push onward. There had been a dense sense of sickening memories filtering in his butchered mind; he refused to allow those images of crimson to consume his mind. He was on a mission and his objective was to find a simple item in the snow._

_Calculating his strides, he took a deep breath, allowing the frigid air to bury his lungs, and blinked the watery film out of his pale blue eyes, scanning the area for something his heart knew that he wouldn't find. There in the division of the squalls of wispy snow, he found a lanky figure stumbling, it was a boy, small stature, frail and sickly. He was wearing a tattered light brown jacket, and frayed trousers. His face was angular and thinned, but his crystal blue eyes held so much strength as he turned around and looked at the Winter Solider, gentle unafraid and welcoming._

_Fear had been absent in his eyes, as he coughed out a few strangled words, "I'm cold Bucky,.." He looked straight forward, searching for an escape. His lips trembled as he stepped closer. "Help me… Bucky." He lifted up his small hand, revealing a shimmering chain with dog tags, and placed it into the gloved palm of the Winter Soldier. "Bucky…"_

_The Soldier narrowed his dismal eyes, translating the engravings on the steel plates : James Buchanan Barnes-Sergeant 32557-107 Infantry._

_His eyes swelled with vehemence, "James Barnes?" he whispered in riven voice, blinking the clusters of snow building against his eyelashes. His hands trembled as cold seared in his veins, trying the skin of his knuckles white. The fact that it hurt so much to remember a name, caused distress to build over his heart. The fact that he didn't want to acknowledge the axiom of truth made his stomach churn. He held the dog tags in the clutch of his metal hand, squeezing the chain against the chrome digits, and set his jaw down hard._

_"Do you remember me, Buck?" the boy whispered, timidly. "You know me. You know who I am."_

_His ghostly pale blue glinted in the haze of faint moonlight. He was shaking, driven by alarming terror, and confusion. He still didn't know how to respond to his phantoms. Who he was underneath flesh, bone and metal. He felt lost inside a hollow vessel. "I don't know…" He struggled to answer the shivering blonde haired boy fading into the whirls of snowfall. He felt like his emotions were disarmed, heart pounded until an dull ache penetrated through the bones of his thorax. "Don't go away," he spoke in a even breath, trying to gain his stern composer. His hand extended, trying to reach the boy. "I don't want you to become lost…"_

_"You'll find me again, Bucky." The boy spoke in a whisper and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He slowly walked away._

_"No…" the Winter Soldier called out in a shrilling voice of desperation, but he felt frozen to the ground to follow, and he felt the ice threatening to crack underneath his combat boots. He was alone once more, fighting against the relentless bite of winter's breath all while it harbored him to step forward, and enter the violent tempest. "Come back…"_

* * *

He woke up in a startling breath, his blue eyes widened. Grasping his scattered thoughts, he forced himself to listen to the reprimanding words of a small voice lulling him back into reality,

"Mister, Sir! Are you okay?"

Splotches of decaying images of red crawled across his vision. Bubbling under heat of unwashed tears and tainting his rugged cheeks with lines of clear moisture. The Winter Soldier's body reeked of feverish sweat as he became aware of the pain that still resided in his body.

Fragments of images left him in a dormant state and he leaned against the cement column-muscles tensed as he held pressure there for a long moment until he transition into true consciousness. The burst of white hot pain blazed in his pounding skull had dulled into a subdued throbbing that reached his jawline. Freezing and tightening the bones in his face with a numbing ache that ceased to stop if his body protested against it.

"I'm fine…"

He jerked into a pliant stance, metal fist clenched and pale blue eyes snapped open with fever haze. The trauma of re-triggered memories had taken its toll over his mind-turning his thoughts into ravage emotions as the sensation of familiarity rippled through his muscled body. It was all around him. He wasn't huddled in the corner of the dull bunk room, or bounded to a bed post with handcuffs clasped over his right wrist. His head was still cloudy, memories seemed to lie in empty spaces, everything was creeping back inside of him. He had lost track of …Days…weeks and months. It was beginning to feel like years had betrayed him.

The Winter Soldier blinked the shooting pain of molten red out of his glistened eyes, and then he took an alarming step backwards. His unnerved gaze fell at the child tugging on his leather sleeve. He timidly took an dependent step closer to the lockers. He could deduced a few things of his new surroundings. Unbidden Words failed against his tongue. "What?" the assassin questioned monotonously.

Breathing heavily, the boy looked around, frantically. "I remember my grandfather bringing me here…Telling me something important…" His voice dimmed as he pointed a shaking hand to the tried to avoid the the icy glare of the half robotic, half monstrous hybrid of a man-a mess of emotional and hazardous relapses. "I don't know much…"

The Winter Soldier gave him an short, and responsive nod and quietly stole closer to the lockers. He parted his firm lips, "Do you remember if your guardian…I mean grandfather used one of these lockers?" he asked and seized the opportunity to ram his metal fist into the metal surface. The child tugged once again on his sleeve. "What?" he growled in a fierce and abrasive tone, his eyes became blue daggers under the mussed hair. He couldn't believe that he was disobeying orders after he broke the transmitter tracking device attached on his SIG-Sauer P226 pistol and flew halfway across the world with a stranger and searching for a ghost of his past.

The boy pointed to the number lock, "I remember a code. It's date of Independence Day…I think it was Captain America's birthday?"

His brow furrowed confusingly and his lips twitched as the name hummed in his ears.

Captain America.

Biting his lip, he shoved the boy away, and pressed the numbers …07…04…1…7…7…6…

Listening, to the pattering sound of metal grinding against his temple. He felt slightly taken aback and wasn't sure what to do, but he found tattered card board box stored inside with the letters J.B.B. branded on the dented cover.

Warm tears had started building in his eyes as he swiped his leather sleeve against his face. "I remember this box.." he whispered in a faint breath. The world around him seemed to grew dim. He slammed his fist against the locker, denting the steel before he tucked his knees close to his chest, and sunk his head down obstinately.

Long, and straggly brown strands cascaded over his face as he trembled in shock and tried to regain back his memories. He felt his stomach churn as waves of spiraling bile struck him. He blinked, and chanced a look but the world was a veiled blur from the tears coating in his tortured eyes. Blink, and the grayness of wintry darkness consumed his vision until he saw nothing just foggy shapes.

A hand emerged from the clouds of smoke, reaching out to help him stand back onto his feet.

"Bucky," Steve said, softly, quietly, and firm, like he was guiding him back home. " "Don't be afraid, soldier, take my hand."

"I can't," he whispered, sounding broken and timid. The obstruction of static in his mind swelled as he tore his glistening eyes away, and scoffed back, not accepting the hand. "You're not real…Just another deceive lie to weather down his soul. "Get away from me!" he snarled, feeling the blood pulse faster in his veins. His stomach clenched and twisted as he allowed cold words to rip out of his throat."You're not him…You're dead to me…"

Releasing a vicious growl, he drove his lips into his knee. His fingers weaved into his matted hair as dug pressure into his skull, and drew out sharp and ragged pants of breath against the material of his pants.

"Okay. Your Ma is coming, Stevie." A dark haired boy said as he wrapped his arm around the sickly child shivering against him. "It's going to be okay. I'm not going to you freeze out here alone." He stifled his lips into a smirk, looking down at Steve huddled in the warmth of his winter coat. The blonde haired boy placed his frail hand on his broad shoulder.

"Buck, get out here. Find a warm place." Steve protested in a wheeze, his cough rattled through his rib cage. It hurt so much tears flooded his light blue eyes. "I'm fine…My Ma is coming…"

Bucky rested his hand instantly on his friend's forehead, the temperature of the fever was spiking as he spoke to Steve. "Nah..I'm not leaving you, little punk. Now shut your trap and let me haul your stupid ass back to your place. You're not heavy…" He remarked, stroking his hand over the ruffled locks of drenched blonde hair sticking on Steve's brow. He renounced the concerned emotion that netted within his heart. He held his hand gently at the center of Steve's narrow chest, and whispered. "I can carry you back home…"

The pit dread that was forming his stomach began to grow until it enveloped his entire torso. He gnashed his teeth into the bone of his knee once he felt the constricting pain squeeze his insides and tear everything apart. He wasn't used to having a flood of memory reemerge in his altered mind, it was strange and frightening for him to react to the different emotions pouring out of his system. He felt sick, and blinked away the images penetrating deep inside his subconscious that grew more intense each passing moment.

James Buchanan Barnes.

The boy picked up the box, inspecting the initials engraved on the tin. "Is this your name?"

"I don't know," He whispered scratchily, keeping his eyes lowered and heaved out a deep sigh. His lips forged a broken frown. "If I could remember I would tell you, kid, but, I can't…"

"My grandfather told me about you, that is why I'm not afraid to talk you.." The boy settled down next to the Winter Soldier. Indignantly, he spoke up with brave cadence in his voice. He was defiant against the paralyzing fear emitting from his new guardian's ominous gaze. "Grandfather said that you were his good friend and that I have no reason to fear you because a good soldier never harms a child. He protects."

"You've got guts, kid, I'll give that," He replied hoarsely, trying to pull his lips into a smirk. "You mentioned that your grandfather lives around here? Can you tell me more information that way I know this mission wasn't a total waste of my time." He hissed out impatiently, as his dull blue eyes watched the boy playing with the dog tags. "Hey, that's not a toy." he gritted.

The boy shrugged, and continued twirling the necklace around his finger. He gazed up at the Winter Soldier, with his bright and mischievous eyes. "Why do you care, it doesn't belong to you…" He teased, dramatically tipping his head against the assassin's shoulder. "Or does it?"

Feeling the boy's breath on his sleeve, Winter Soldier, stiffened his edgy posture, his unshaven jaw became rigid as he leveled his blue eyes down at the child with fierce intent."When I brought you, here, I expected silence." He withheld a deep a growl, biting on his tongue, but the tension was nagging him. "I don't know if it belongs to me…It is important. So don't wreck it, kid."

"Yes, sir.." Permitted by the growl in his voice, the boy broke eye contact, and answered in German.

"I need to know your name. It's standard protocol during a mission." He requested in clear English, still staring at the dog tags.

"Yes, sir," Hesitantly, the child toddled an inch closer, and crossed his arms over his bony chest. Old memories of large and kind hearted American soldier with light blue eyes and a bowler hat wove into his brain-images of flames and classrooms surfaced as he clutched his small arms close to his bony ribs. The man was Dum Dum Dugan-A Howling Commando-his guardian. He remember his own name though the omissions and gaping holes torn from numerous tortures of isolation and darkness-Stephen. That was his name-His real existence. "My name is Stephen. That is all I can remember since Victor did something to me when I had been taken away from grandfather."

"Victor?" The Winter Soldier pulled a disheartened frown and benevolent gleam in his blue eyes and ingrained himself into questioning Stephen. "That is the name of the war criminal who abducted you?"

Stephen nodded, and rolled up his sleeve, revealed blemished skin with distant mark etched around the wrist. "Victor was a mean man…He locked me in closets and made me sleep in handcuffs so I -I wouldn't escape." he meekly answered in a tiny submissive voice, thinned lips trembling. "Victor worked for someone…A strange bald headed man with a beard. I think the man was Russian…I'm not sure because Victor put me in the closet during their conversions. After he put a needle in me and watched me cry…The man always left before I had a chance to get a good look." He sniffled, and dropped his head into his small hands.

"It wasn't your fault," The Winter Soldier gritted, a tearful snarl ripped out of his throat. He inspected his chrome fingers, looking at the lingering flecks of dried blood in nooks of the metal. "They used you to get power back into their hands." He resolved, caressing a brotherly touch over Stephen's scarred wrist. "You have freedom now to live out of the dark…"

"I don't know if I will see grandfather again, or if he even wants me," Stephen hesitated out a breath, and lowered his head, ashamedly down. "I did bad things when I was dreaming." He looked at the Winter Soldier with uncertain eyes, and swallowed down his sobs. "I played games with a gun and heard screams. When I woke up there was a lot of red."

"Your grandfather will understand," the Winter Soldier countered, voice baritone, soft. He messed up Stephan's blonde locks. He cleared his throat. "You did nothing wrong. Remember that, kid." He pressed his lips into firm line of harden anguish and felt the boy's head edge closer to his chest. He gave him a cocky smirk, it felt right to do -it was a comfort and reassurance. "I know what it feels like to fall asleep and wake up in a strange room…I've done it so many times it just keeps on repeating until…" His shadowy voice drifted away.

Creasing his eyebrows into a disquiet line, he leaned his tensed and rigid posture against the lockers. His body sunk to the ground holding the treasure closer as he inspected the hidden belongings with an automaton daze. He broke away from his focus for a second, turning his blue eyes back at Stephen before narrowing them down at the letters, photos, scraps of maps and tarnished dog tags. The steel plates had engravings of someones's name etched in the steel plating. He felt disjointed at the sudden exposure of truth that his wary eyes fell upon, suddenly empty, but not dead to the hellish memories of isolation and torture that gleamed in his darkened eyesight.

Flashes of vibrant red engulfed his mind...Pulling back into the place where tortured humanity became monsters overnight.

The Red Room.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

* * *

Lobnya, (Ло́бня), Russia, February 7th 1945-The Red Room

It was foreboding sanctuary where demons of human flesh lurked. There was no escape. Death was the key to gain freedom. Many lives had been butchered and slaughtered behind the iron and shoddy brick walls of the desolated building. To unseen eyes it had the appearance of an old boarding school, but once footsteps breached through the rusted gates. Deception unveiled the truth hidden inside the ominous darkened windows. Chains rattled in the folds of shadows, and screams bellowed for release. Every room was filled with young captives -orphans and forgotten soldiers collected by the Russian military. Corridors were lit with tarnished light and cervices in the wall were utilized as prisons to secure uncooperative assets. They were treated like animals and weakened until docile humanity adapted to the natural selection of order within the ranks.

Inside a vast boarding room, a man of a six foot stature stood in the doorway of the locked down room. He carried a pungent stench and wore sleek leather with red emblems of the Soviet shoulder that etched on his sleeve. His bald head gleamed against the dimming sunlight streaming from the grime covered windows and seawater colored eyes narrowed at clipboard. He interjected harsh words in Russian to a group of young men standing before iron spring beds of a vast and damp room of the prison."Today marks a new era of warfare. I am here to give purpose and make you loyal to Mother Russia."

He cuffed his hands behind his back, and moved with purposeful and disciplined steps while looking down at a clip board. He looked at one young man with rakish dark locks, broad Western features-chiseled jawline, cleft chin and piercing blue eyes whom stood stiff and frozen in front of his stern gaze- a new volunteer. Studying, the handsome soldier, he wrote down notes-height, eye color and weight. He inched closer with a menacingly blank face and tapped his pen over the bandaged limb and observed the pain welled in the soldier's glazed eyes. Left arm had been amputated after suffering severe exposure to cold temperatures.

The soldier was silent. His blue eyes vacant, posture rigid, lips broke part, "I live to serve Mother Russia." he finally said in a robotic thrum.

The Major General folded his arms coldly over his chest. "Do you know why I allowed you to live?"

"I don't know, Sir," A strangled groan was his response of defiance. He started feeling pressure building in his skull. Something didn't feel right to him.

"The purpose of your existence is to follow and obey commands without compliance. You are a new breed of soldiers-submissive operatives who used silent communication as defiance against opposing forces." He flipped the pages, and scribbled a few words in red ink. "Boys and men like: the reason why you are here is to serve your country. This is home: here you will be taught how to fight in combat, how to obey and how you must not be afraid to kill without hesitation in the glory of mother Russia. You are the first of many that have been selected to become weapons to make objectives achieve…Only a few of you will survive the next months…Fail and you will be eliminated. Welcome to Department X."

"Comrade Karpov," Came the voice from a chiseled face man in matching black uniform who stood at his side, stationary. "I have obtain the acquired details you have requested from Allied databases. All information has given us a clear understanding that the man before you was Captain America's partner… A soldier from Brooklyn USA…

Name: James Buchanan Barnes.

Rank: Sergeant of the 107th infantry also known as the Howling Commandos.

The battery of blood tests also intake that his background is Irish American-and he carries the "super" formula in his system."

The Major General Vasily Karpov removed a swathed combat knife and held it against the soldier's throat. He watched the beads of sweat roll down the clean shaven jaw, and then he slapped his gloved hand across the man's unreadable face, jerking the head to the side. "Tell me are you afraid to die, soldier?" he taunted and read over the documents. "It says that you fell off a speeding train and Doctor Armin Zola brought you back to life by using administered electricity, Cardio- Pulmonary Resuscitation which pumped fluid back into your heart. I must say that you are very much dead…You have no reason to live except to serve me…And the Soviet Army as hollow and organic weapon."

Spilling out a gob of blood, the young dark haired man held his full lips firm, and then he answered in low and yet incoherent voice, "I am not afraid…To die for Russia." he growled with deception laced in his strained voice. His pale Aegean eyes glared at Karpov, icily. His mouth formed into a cocky, and brazen smirk. Not acquiesced to the rules. "I'm not afraid of you…Bald head pig."

The moment Karpov caught resistance surfacing his monotone voice; he was snatched by the throat, thrown against crumbling wall and coshed against the face by a hand. The soldier managed to raise his head, and spit into his face. Disgusted, Karpov had just enough pressure to the thorax, and listened to his newest victim wheeze. "You have much to learn…I see now the only way I can have you on leash to break you apart from the inside."

With that, the Major General stepped back methodically aback, and glared darkly at the other vacant subjects aligned against the bed posts. "This man has American blood running through his veins…It will soon be extracted once the injections commence." he hissed, and with a snap of his fingers, his assistants emerged from the doorway, each one holding a filled syringe. "Roll up your sleeves, and try not to scream…"

Karpov shot an displeased glower at the American, as he came into contact with piercing blue embers. "Disobedience will not go unnoticed. You will thrown in cell and starved until you learn proper respect." He crouched down to the soldier's level, and clasped his hand over the young man's throat, and then he ripped a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, and latched them to his wrist and his own arm. "Do I make myself clear, boy?"

"Yes, sir…" The young man breathed, smoldering tears which welled in his eyes and flooded down his ashen cheeks. The handlers didn't care. Soon, he was dragged onto his feet and yanked out of the doorway while listening to ear shattering screams of the young boys echo through the long corridors before everything begun to dull inside an eerie silence of darkness.

_"Bucky!" Steve roared out with solace gleaming in his teary blue eyes. His hand trembled against the flecks of snow. His chiseled face fractured with pain. A lot of pain that tore out of his lips as he listened to his friend and brother fall and disappear, with one heart beat he felt the cruel, unbidden and ugly defeat."Bucky..."_

"Steve..." He unleashed a cry, horrified and hateful tears streaked over his face. Red, white and light flashed in his unfocused eyes. He fought against the restraint, and pulled himself closer to the faint stream of light expelling from a crack in the hollow wall. He was reaching to grasp an invisible hand. They wouldn't let him extend his right arm. They yanked him, pinning him to a wall. He had to come back. He had to find Steve. "Take my hand..."


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

* * *

Latvia, 1991

His dilated pale blue eyes sharpened against the dim glow of muted light. Numbness crept through his bones and muscles weaved with tension. He hearing was dulled by the sound of his heavy tactical boots thumping on the granite floor. With a growl, vicious and guttural, he pushed his way through the clusters of people standing in a huddle near the counter. Heart rate exceeded in his chest as he regained a sense of direction the moment Stephen's tiny hand tugged on his leather sleeve, and he felt himself reluctantly pulling closer to long bar. The intoxicating scent of coffee invaded his nostrils. It smelt rich and so familiar. His skull was pounding with trepidation as he reluctantly neared the row of bar stools. There became a gripping sense of dread-alarmed and unfocused he bashed his metal arm against the wood; and froze in unbalanced step.

"Grandfather!"

Unwilling to advance, he latched his piercing blue embers on the older man, Dum Dum Dugan sitting at the bar. "Stephen." His voice raised, with hearty and American dialect. He turned around, bluish-gray eyes brightened as he stared down at the boy springing up to him with a excited smile beaming over his face. In a matter of seconds they embraced into a tight bear hug. "It's good to see you, my boy." He smiled broadly, and then stroked his hand over Stephen's blonde locks, and lifted him up and onto a stool. "How did you find me?" he incredulously, looking into the boy's eyes.

Stephen bit down on his lip, and pointed a small hand at the Winter Soldier looming in the doorway. "He saved me, grandfather."

When Dugan settled his glazed eyes and stared into the familiar blue eyes filled with distraught and heartache, he couldn't stop that frown that commanded over his broad features aged with wrinkles. For the first time in sixty years he felt his heart clench in hollow bones of his chest. "Sergeant Barnes?" There was no response. He kept his distance, and stared at the emptied and murderous face of a phantom who carried the distant gaze of his forgotten friend. He didn't know why, but his chest hurt, and he wanted to avert his eyes.

Daring himself not to stare at the blank expression shrouding over the young man's chiseled face. "It's good to see you again, Buck." he said, thick mustache twitched across his upper lip. Composing himself, and ignoring the visible indications of a threat, Dugan placed his hands on the stained mahogany bar top while fighting to have dominance over HYDRA's programming. Deactivation was necessary during the prolonged moments of just staring at the lethal hybrid of precision, metal and blue eyes of Russia's ice-the Winter Soldier.

For a fraction of a second, Dugan froze under his shadow and he just stared in bewilderment and remorse at the man sitting next to him...James Barnes-Bucky…Steve's friend and blood brother.

"Do you remember me, Buck?"

He felt ragged and disheveled. His skin pallid and blemished from various amounts of torture. This wasn't the Bucky who served with her in the harsh winters. She took in his appearance. He wore black military pants which fitted snug against the trim muscled planes of his abdomen. A tattered leather jacket. Black with silver patches on the elbows. His once neatly groomed rakish hair was now a wolfish mane was fell into curtains along the sharp clench of his jaw. His chiseled and broad features carried no smoothness, just bristled and rigid skin. Finally the metal limb embedded into whatever flesh Zola had left on his shoulder. It reeked of HYDRA.

There was no response. No clarity of understanding dwelled in his deaden eyes.

The Winter Soldier clenched his jaw as those words resounded in his ears. He furrowed his eyebrows into a crease of confusion and unconsciously took a step forward. His metal hand slipped over the hostler strap attached to his pants. He felt the hostile nature taking over his whirling emotions. "Why did you call me, Bucky?" he seethed against gritted teeth. He tried to force the gray haze out of his mind. Images of a tall blonde haired soldier wearing red, white and blue slogged in his vision, inside a restricting low trek of detached memory. He blinked frantically, trying to regain stability in his body. Heaves of breath rattled against his ribs as he felt as if a cold bucket of water was being splashed over him. "Do you know me?" he asked, in a choking breath.

"Hell yeah, I've known you for a long time, Buck." Dugan replied as he looked into the soulless, and distant wintry blue chasms of the ghost staring him down. He sigh, and shook his head. He lurched forward, keeping his posture casual. "I'm Dum Dum Dugan. An old friend and tough gritted soldier who fought with you in the 107th infantry. You were the a sergeant of the Howling Commandos." he exclaimed, as a fond memory brought a faint smile over his face. "Boy, it was one hell of ride serving with Captain America."

"Captain America?" He repeated, his voice thick and low and aching with rawness. An exhausted thrum behind his hardened eyes that wouldn't avail, and he found himself staring down at the dog tags hanging out from one of his pockets. Dugan rested a hand over the metal plated shoulder, trying to put some form of ease back into him. "I remember a solider with blonde hair…" His words halted, and his throat grew swollen. It felt unclear to him, but somehow he knew that the name burying itself deep within whatever marred piece of organ HYDRA had left was a part of him. "I think I knew him..."

Keeping to himself at the bar against the haze of whiskey and amber glow of dimmed light Steve was there. The blonde haired soldier's sharp cheekbones and chiseled jawline set into a commanding semblance as he sipped his drink silently, taking in everything around him while preparing for the next mission. His inquisitive light blue eyes narrowed as he dropped his head down, a few loose blonde strands brushed over his forehead.

He sat on the stool, smiling to himself while listening to Howling Commandos in the background, clanging mugs and conversing about the previous rescue operation. They had stormed a fortress occupied by HYDRA. Now, they were enjoying their freedom, leaving the dread and stresses of the battlefront behind them-just living in the moment as friends and brothers. He looked up, and curved his lips into a gentle smile, "Bucky…"

"Steve,"he whispered out a breath of disbelief, his eyes snapped open, and lines of water made a slow trek down his face. Regardless, he felt the muscles in his chest tightened. With a quick movement, he buried his face into his shaking hands. His eyes closed, and he sat there, still like ice, but thawing. Thawing. A sob carried him away from Dugan, and and unsealed his lips, regaining traction of his thoughts as a graveled cry heated against her skin. "He carried a shield..."

Dugan nodded, not releasing his strong grip over the bionic shoulder. "Yeah, he carried more than that, Buck." Then, he turned his focus on Stephen, the boy was sitting at a table doodling on a napkin. "I want to thank you for saving my adopted grandson. He calls me his grandfather because of white rug I've got for hair." He crinkled his lips into a smile. "I found him back in Russian, after Peggy and I raided an old boarding school. There wasn't that many survivors, but this little guy...Well, let's just say he wanted to be saved." He sighed, and patted Stephen's hand for a moment, and then he felt his lips slack into a despondent frown. "His real name is Alexei, but I wanted to give him a chance to have a good life so I gave him a new name...I know he he can be a handful, but he is a good kid."

A deep and intense silence followed after a spike of blood flow surging within his veins; for the Winter Soldier, he felt trapped. Held captive with no way of escaping the dreadful fate he had been subjected to. Hearing Dugan's voice had become a calming against the storms clouding within his mind. He had to run. In a jerky movement, he leaned against the bar and stared at Stephen with darkened eyes. "The boy is from the Red Room?" he asked with a bitterness laced in his low voice. "Isn't he?"

"I wish I could say that your assumption wasn't true," Dugan sighed, lifting his mug of coffee, and took a sip. His spirit unraveled. "The boy was a part of a classified experiment documented on a ghost file. Those bastards did a lot of harm to him. Too much for his little body to handle." He tore his eyes away from his grandson. "The prime generals of KBG created a new science project containing lives of young boys. All of them blonde with blue eyes. When agents of SHIELD discovered the compound, all evidence was destroyed including the dozen of orphans subjected to that inhuman crap. I found Alexei strapped down into a chair with a lot of red fluid pumping into his arms. He was the strongest and the only boy that survived that damned horror show." He shifted uncomfortably, and noticed the tin boxed stuffed in the other man's jacket. "Enough about those days. You've got something you want to ask me, don't you, Buck?"

"This box..." The Winter Soldier said hoarsely. His throat clogged up, he felt timid. His breathing was harder than he could manage."Who does it belong to?"

Dugan narrowed his eyes, and his voice sounded broken."They've brainwashed you, more than once." He looked at the tarnished silver box as the assassin placed it on the bar. "It belongs to you. I kept in storage after you had been declared dead by Captain Rogers. When I heard the news that you survived the fall, I spent a lot of days searching for you with whatever was left of our boys." He stared at the box, and just kept on staring. Moisture gathered in his eyes. "I had to find a away for you to get your memories back." He pulled out a card with a numbers written around the edges. "Keep this safe. It will help erase the deception they have made you to believe in."

"I fell of a train?" he asked in a rumbling pause, his voice thick and dark. A faint sob crackled up his throat. His blue eyes widened in bewilderment."I died?"

'Bucky," Dugan uttered back, his voice monotone, and his heart clenched in his chest. "It doesn't matter. You're here now...You're alive."

"No," The asset stammered harshly. Murderous intent rippled through his veins. The masses of flashbacks grew increase as he slashed his hand over the wood, violently knocking the mugs to the floor. With a look of solace, Dugan quickly scooped up Stephen, and withdrew a few alarming steps back. He was having a mental breakdown, fighting against the thoughts and instincts programmed into his psyche by his tormentors. Dread was shown clearly across his slacked features. He was being pulled into a mindless delirium. "i'M DEAD!" His hostile and confused voice rang out. He was just a destructive force of pure coldness and aggression."I'M DEAD TO YOU!"

His blue eyes once again found Dugans', tears began to water them. "I-I..I know you..," His voice cracked.

Dugan nodded, right now his insides felt as though they were being ripped to shreds as he looked into his friend's pain filled eyes. "Its okay…Its going to be okay, Buck."

Suddenly, Winter Soldiers' gaze hardened against him as if those words insulted him. Ripped his hand away, he rammed it repeatedly into the wall beside the ducking waitress's head, hitting drywall, wood: everything but the woman. "No! No! NEVER! It WILL NEVER BE ALL RIGHT! IT CAN'T—-ARGHHHH!"

He fell to his knees, face twisted in agony. His hands fumbling into the tangles of his long dark locks as he released a soul-shattering cry into the room as he began to meltdown.

Dugan placed Stephen down, and ordered the boy to exit the restaurant, and then he grabbed the metal wrist. "Buck, settle down soldier. You're going to harm a lot of people." Anger tore into him like uncontainable fire. ""I just want to help you." He entreated, moving away from the Winter Soldier, but keeping a cautious distance away.

"Stop…" Came the younger man's choked response as trembled in panic.

"Bucky," Dugan huffed out a breath, reaching to grasp the metal shoulder. In a moment of tensed silence, and fighting the tug of fear ...it had become utterly maddening. This wasn't the hellbent soldier talking, but a concerned friend. Maybe he had to take another risk, or maybe Bucky no longer existed. Then he realized that Steve would keep on fighting."Get a hold of yourself, Barnes."

"STOP CALLING ME THAT! STOP!" The Winter Soldier roared, rising to his feet with new life in his angry eyes. It was startling to Dugan. His cheeks were stained with shed tears as he bared his teeth at him, his body slightly shook with restrained rage that begged to be unleashed. What came instead were hopeful yet harrowing words.

"I remember… I remember snow. I remember a runaway train…"

Dugan looked at him sadly.

The assassin looked at him emptily. "I fell…" A single tear fell and made a small splash on the floor.

Dugan stood his ground, readying himself for his next move as he looked between the mess of his friend and the gun clutched in the metal grasp of bionic fingers. It was a bit daunting. There measure of life at stake piled over his chest as he listened to encroaching bootsteps closing in on his position. He took a chanced a glare, spun around and raised his fists to strike. A gloved hand pinched against his collar bone, brutal and fast. "At ease, old man." Came a gruff and sadistic voice from an HYDRA agent behind him. A gun was cocked against his skull. "You have three seconds to step away from the asset, or your little friend outside will come back to you in a body bag."

He was startled, not by just the murderous hiss buffeting over his neck, but by the iciness of the tan skinned operative's demeanor that conveyed to sense of empathy or humanity whatsoever. He resisted the urge to fight as his eyes trained on a few more agents standing in front of Stephen with automatics strapped to their shoulders, his knuckles cracked and he withdrew a step away. His strength failed to compromise with urges of attack, and he was yanked by another pair of hands and forced away from the bar. "What are you jerks going to do Barnes?" he growled, feeling suddenly braver than he did moments before.

The operative regarded him with deadly sneer. "He's called the asset. That's all he is to us. We'll do whatever the director wants." He lowered his weapon, and turned his cold and hungry glare back onto the Winter Soldier. "Remove the old soldier from my sight." he barked out, keeping his dark eyes leveled on his weapon. "Prepare for extraction. The Winter Soldier has a mission to finish in Odessa." He inched closer to Dugan, and spat into his face. "If you ever come between me and the asset again...I'll fill that damned hat of yours with lead."

"If you ever spit in my face again," Dugan smirked ruefully, ignoring the threat. "I'll pop you head clean off, boy."

"Get this piece of filth out of my sight!" the operative bellowed to his agents, and then reached out a small gun filled with a tranquilizer dart. He pulled the trigger, and watched the Winter Soldier's sagging muscles instantly crash to the floor. Feverishly, he thumped his boots closer to the unconscious assassin, crouched down and grabbed a fistful of matted hair, jerking his head up. "Have a nice nap, Winter." he taunted, licking the dryness off his lips. He nodded begrudgingly to an agent hauling the laden form of HYDRA's greatest marksman outside into a black SUV. A sardonic smile formed on his face as he began backing away from the fuming soldier blocking his path.""See you around, old man...Or not. I'll tell Barnes you said goodbye."

Dugan watched his leave the entire way, his gaze unwavering and livid until the noise of thunder blaring drew his attention. He turned around sharply and watched in horror as young woman stumbled to the curve hugging her blood stained chest. It was a distraction that ushered the soldier inside of him to assistance her wound.

"BUCKY!" He blared out, hasting outside and stared at the vehicle fade into the shadows.

* * *

Carpathian Mountains, Romania, 1991

Red water lapped over his compromised body. Quiet and sloshing. A lifeless body of HYDRA agent floated under the wooden poles of the dock. He didn't show sentient for his falling comrade. His rigid muscles crashed against the grimy stone underneath the support beams, he manged to grab into a jagged piece with one thrush of his metal hand splashing out of the polluted water. His powerful torso heaved out heavily breaths, as he gritted his teeth and forced his weight against the nearest beam. He growled, sloppy strands of hair draped over his maroon smeared jawline.

Releasing a raw and frustrated growl, he snapped his feverish blue eyes out at the dock, and stared at her-the Russian spy standing on the edge with her Glock 26 handgun pointing down at the frothing waves. Dressed in a combat suit, black with red emblems on her trimmed shoulders, and her green eyes carried derision and malevolence as she searched for her target. In hushed movements, he gripped the beam, and hoisted himself up, climbing the dock like a hungry spider waiting to the make the kill. He used attack and tactical methods to ensnare her into his trap. One second. The metallic noises of his arm broke her concentration as he yanked her arm with forceful grip and pulled her into the water. His attack zone.

"You made me fail to obtain the directive," He said threateningly, his unshaven chin stiffen and muscled chest swelled defensively. "Who sent you here?" He grunted at the red haired woman glaring up at him coldly with her weapon aimed for his head. He barred his teeth at her, tasting the blood and salt water seeping over his lips as he removed his swathed knife, gripping the handle, and then he dropped into the water with a massive splash. They wasted no time of engaging an assault of hand to hand combat. Knives slashed through leather and Kevlar, skin bruised and Russian curses exploded.

Yanking at her drenched strands of scarlet, he jerked her head up, and held the knife to her throat, pressing the serrated edges against the pulsing jugular vein. Gasping out with labored breaths, she bit into his real hand, applying pressure. It turned the skin into reddish hue in the wake of teeth forcing themselves close to the veins

"You overreached," he seethed out, in an alarming snarl, 'You should brought more men to protect you from me." He exhaled roughly, his breath caught in the thickness of spilled blood and strawberry fragrance permeating his senses. Everything flashes into red and he pushed the woman away, using his palm against the curve of her line, trying to break it with bone shattering force. She yelped only once, and reached for his wolfish mane, tugging and pulling in a defense before snaking her arm over his throat.

"I know how to handle these simple missions on my own," she rebuffed, sounding indignant. "I took out your men with only a few shots. I know your weaknesses."

He smirked at that, and enclosed his metal hand over her thigh, squeezing the muscle until skin bruised. He was merciless, and listened to her yelp in pain as she writhed against him. Both of their chests collided, but he impended to finish the mission. To retrieve the item for HYDRA. "You should consider yourself lucky," he told her, the haunting chill was suddenly erased in his voice. "I'm out of bullets."

"Tell me, handsome" she said with abrasive chill ghosting over his feverish skin. "How many devils have you danced with?"

He threw his weight against her lithe body. He jabbed his knife into her exposed shoulder with determination to enter grizzly sight that met his eyes was not one that he had been unaccustomed to. Years of war and death had hardened his nerves so the putrid smell of death and the sight of so much blood did little to unsettle him. Feeling ensnared he could not suppress the cold shiver that crept down his spine as his stunned blue eyes beheld the chilling sight of a bullet filled and bloodied operatives. Each of them floating towards the shoreline where a savagely beaten Brock Rumlow stood. Four dead bodies surrounded the young operative, all with sniper slugs lodged in their foreheads.

"You can't stop me. Not this time." she clenched her teeth, body trembled with the rage scorching in her pulsing veins."This is my reckoning..My Mission.." She glared at his face, bruises and bloodied welts littered his raw and chiseled features. "I will finish it until all you are just stains on my leather." She growled, her vision livid into a hellish haze, and gloved hands shook while she brushed the muzzle of her gun on his clenched jawline. "When I'm done with you, I'll be leaving in a body bag."

The Winter Soldier swallowed his trepidation and wore a fierce yet compassionate look as he watched her; feared for her and what had been done to her in past.. The red marks around her wrists where she had ripped through her bonds were but a pale reflection of the cuts and bruises on her arms and face. The fact that she was still standing this fierce, this determined, was a testament to her inner strength and willpower. He knew more than anyone that strength and willpower could be directed positively or negatively. He'd glimpsed the ugly side that was negative. He raveled and controlled himself. It was a side that still haunted his nightmares and he knew now how dangerously close this red haired girl was to teetering over the edge and into the red abyss.

"I don't think so..." He tried to reason with her; sparing no glance at the disgruntled operative who glared at him through a swollen eye. "I'm not going to kill this time...You don't deserve to have freedom." He watched her as her fingers splay over his knife, taking intimate action, he quickly seized her wrist, and continued. "but you're leaving here empty handed. You failed your objective." He sneered, and pulled the knife out of her shoulder, watching blood pool out of the wound. "Next time we cross paths I will not make a mistake of putting a bullet into you."

"Neither will I," she digressed evenly against his jaw. Venom seeped from her lips, and she twisted herself against the lapping waves, and swiped his twined knife. She stabbed the blade into his collar bone with perfect and accurate pressure against fragile bone, but he rammed his fists into her thorax and let her body slip into the water.

He didn't care if she drown or bled out. He cared about the mission, he glared at her drifting body with his darkened blue eyes and just for a fraction of moment he fought the inner struggle to help her.

And them violent punch against the rotten wood, he broke the structure of the dock, giving her something to hold onto, while swam to the shore.


	19. Chapter 19

**Part 3**

** { Mastery }**

**Chapter 19**

* * *

-Present-

He woke up in a startling breath, his blue eyes widened as he listened to the reprimanding words of torture lull him back into reality, "Having a comfortable nap, Winter." He heard the unemphatic and the abhorrent voice of Rumlow scrape against his ears. He dared himself to peel open his eyes.

The stroke of a gloved hand over his thigh caused him to cringe as the operative was playing nasty to him. A method of torture that separated a man's willpower to respond to an unsavory touch, and devolve respect. He had been treated like an animal for a lifetime, his body mulled by the other HYDRA operatives who had trained with him as the subject for routine interrogations. His resilience and endurance was always the best motivation young recruits needed when they trained under the shadow of the gun.

The Winter Soldier had desperately struggled against the worse part when he was the omega-the weak pup of the pack. He had been forced into a submissive posture, bounded to the prisoner's chair with plastic ties strapped to his ankles and a gun pointing at his head. The alphas were inhumane and obsessed with the error of their methods for dominance for the prize asset. Brock Rumlow was their ruthless and sadistic leader, young and misguided by his own resistance against the corruption that plagued in his veins.

"Come on you worthless accuse for a soldier." Rumlow taunted and dug his nails into the exposed, and bloodied skin of the other man's thigh. "I dare you to fight back." he added, tapping the barrel of his automatic against the Winter Soldier's head, but he didn't move. Grunting out in frustration, Rumlow straightened to his boots, and pursed his stiffened lips sourly at the bounded asset.

He was in the consuming fire. His body accepted the pain—he'd grown to become immune to abuse. Instead of crying like a weak and caged man they were trying to break him into being, he lifted her daunting glacial blue eyes, and seared coldness into him with just one lethal glint of defiance. He relaxed against the chair, sipping out drops of murky blood, tasting the bile threatening to creep up his clenching throat. He knew they wanted to scrape him to the bone, turn him raw and control him. He couldn't be caged—he was untamed, fierce and dangerous. He only wore a mistake for a flinching captive to infiltrate deeper.

Rumlow stood uprooted in front of him, he regarded the operative with his murderous dark eyes glared the Winter Soldier down. He reached over and yanked at the thick strands of the other man's hair, grabbing the locks into a fistful. With a wild jerk, the man's head violently tilted back and pressed a the cold metal of his blade against her jaw. He seemed to have grown angry and irritated his eyes black coals. His gruff voice was laden with spite.  
"You thought you could hide your emotions from us, huh, soldier?" He spat, brushing his knuckles over the man's unshaven jaw. " You thought your methods could beat our system… You've made a terrible mistake crossing a line and allowing that sickly brat to hide in the shadows." He moved his hand down and coiled his fingers around the Winter Soldier's thick neck,squeezing hard pressure against his jugular. "They want to keep you alive… I have no idea why because of your compliance. All I see when I look at you is a pathetic mutt who needs to be put down… like every misused dog who gets thrown in this stinking place.

Choking up a gob of coppery tang blood, the Winter Soldier spat a drop at Rumlow's shoe. "The only mutt I see around here is you," He said, malevolence was laced in his raspy baritone. A faint smirk twisted over his swollen lips. He had no idea how those words cultivated in his mind, but it was natural on his tongue when he lifted his redden and bleary azure eyes up at the operative.

"Are you trying to talk dirty to me?" Rumlow chuckled gruffly, almost amused; but his expression shifted into dark glower. "I didn't know that HYDRA's loyal asset had a sense of humor."

"Только тогда, когда я окружен зомби." (Only when I'm surrounded by idiots.) He shot back in Russian, his glazed pale blue eyes held a mischievous twinkle as blood ran down his throat. "And you are an idiot, Rumlow." he added with a viscous hiss escaping from his bruised lips. His eyes landed on the brash operative with a wolfish glare, patient and unpredictable. Rumlow was ruthless, cruel and obsessed with allowing his captives to endure pain with his bare hands.

He trained with the elite and acquired skillets for interrogation. He wasn't a compassionate man. He wasn't someone who was afraid to pull a trigger on an innocent. His mind had been altered with morbid thoughts, that some of the other operatives thought he had been a sociopath-he carried a darkness within him that made his victims shun in fear each time he cracked his knuckles.

Rumlow growled in irritation, and slapped his hand against the other man's cheek, hard force caused enough fraction for his knuckles to crack. "Maybe that will teach you to shut your mouth."

Don't give into pain.

The Winter Soldier's lips pressed together into a tighter line of anguish as he fought to maintain eye contact with Rumlow, even through his vision was being consumed with red splotches of pulsing infliction. Through the corner of his eye, he saw Rollina standing in the door with a dissatisfied frown set on his obscured face. His jaw flexed and his eyes met the dark maroon spilling around his strapped boots.

He sucked in a breath and moaned as Rumlow grabbed a fistful of his tangled and drenched brown hair. He jerked his head back, and pulled away, leaving him gasping, confused and vacant from thought as fragments of another life flashed between his screwed eyelids. His forehead gleamed with beads of sweat, heart raced wildly as pulses of red exploded in his darkened vision. Everything shattered in thousands of shards, and that same frail and blonde haired boy stood in the thick haze of muted gray.

Bucky…Remember who you are…

"No…" the Winter Soldier unreleased a strangled cry, breath wheezed from his lungs, and head thrashed with frantic motion against the chair.

His ears dulled.

He started to scream and wouldn't stop. The world had slipped away, all conscious thought became swallowed. He refused to look into Rumlow's cold eyes, glaring down at him as his body welcomed the pain of knuckles digging into the tender flesh of his wrist. He erased all the torment cultivating in his mind,registering the memories as they came in a torrent dousing over his pounding heart. as his senses automatically shut down, and slick muscles flexed with tensed knots. The swirls of distorted imagery sloshed against his addled brain, as he parted his quivering lips and spit out a blob of dark blood onto the floor.

"Get him off that chair!" Rollins barked at the sadistic operative who appeared to be musing over the asset's cries of distress. "The director wants to keep him alive…"

Rumlow scoffed, "The asset isn't dying you idiot," he barked out, pulling the brown strands from the roots, making his captive squeal a little as heat coated over his sculpt. "This is just a sample of what I would do to him if the director ever decided to put him down," he said with a hint of vehemence in his deep voice. Then, he released his hold on the mass of hair, allowing the loose strands to fall limp over the other man's shoulders.

"The brat isn't going to survive… I don't care whose blood she got pumped in her veins, she isn't going to live another week after all those transfusions. Hell, I bet she won't even last another day." He paused for a breath and patted the asset's swollen cheek. "Isn't that right, mutt?" he asked, kicking the metal leg clamps, and an aggressive sneer spreading over his darkened face while he listened to the estranged howls emitting from the asset's stressed throat.

"Avora!" The Winter Soldier screamed. He threw his head back, his hair fell into his owlish blue eyes in a disarray. He bared his teeth, trying to lift his metal wrist off the clamped securing his arm, his ashen skin turned into a crimson hue as blood flooded through his system, and he glared dangerously at the harsh light. Tears sat in his glassy eyes as he thrust his arm outward, breaking the hinges, and grabbed Rumlow's thigh, squeezing and bruising the muscle.

"I left you wounded last time," he snarled, breath grew into erratic pants, as he listened to the thumping sounds of encroaching boots echoing down the halls. He didn't care. He wasn't going to waste another second, Rumlow was now on his mental hit list. "Now, I will kill you…" he growled.

Rollins staggered closer to the chair, and aimed his automatic directly at the asset, pointing the muzzle at his head. "Say that again, and I'll blow your head clean off," he discharged with a smug grin curling over his lips.

"WHERE IS SHE?" the Winter Soldier snarled monstrously, hoping Rollins would give him information on Avora's location. Dread sat in his his heart. "What have you done to her?"

Rumlow's jaw twitched and eyes grew livid as he stared down at the pleading blue eyes of the desensitized assassin. HYDRA's gun. He crouched down, and removed his jagged blade from a strap attached to his boot, slipping it down the other man's leg until he ripped the material of leader. "I don't think you understand what's going around here," he hissed, gazing at the exposed flesh. "Nobody gets to have access of freedom. Not even that little brat you try to protect. I can become your trainer if I want. My own little doll that can easily be broken. Every time she manages to really piss me off, you know doesn't listen to orders, talks back. I can her down to the basement and really of a hell of a time with her. Piece by piece…" He spat with no emotion in his gruff voice, and his hand gestured to Rollins. "Tell the boys in white to double the voltage. I want to hear him scream out her name."

"No!"

The Winter Soldier grunted out and with a surge of rage he increased his strength of his struggle against the clamps restraining his limbs. Remarkably, he managed to lift the pieces of bolts from the hinges, but it wasn't enough to leave Rumlow daunted; no the malevolent HYDRA enforced just side stepped a few inches, holding that smug grin on his face. He was entering the brink; his ire and adrenaline excelled in his blood stream clouding his vision with molten hue of blood red. His jaw parted, and a cluster of growls escaped from the depths of his raw throat that gave him more ground in front of his handlers who look surprised to levels of his resilience his mortality possessed. His pale blue eyes became like blazing embers under the tresses of his matted hair, giving him the feral look as he glowered dangerously at wrathful operative holding a gun before him. They were trapped in an impasse, each gaze held an unpredictable, gleam as the world blacked out, and all he saw was Rumlow. A target of termination.

"What is HYDRA's favorite going to do?" Rumlow growled, his brown eyes glowed with malice and cruelty. The Winter Soldier wasn't unsettled at all by his gaze. "You can't save her, Winter." he added with licking the corners of his mouth, and chuckled lowly, "I can't believe I was afraid of you when we trained, I used to think you were the fist of HYDRA. Our big gun to level down the world to create a better future. Now, all I want to see is your sorry ass become fried until you squirm like the worm you really are…"

The Winter Soldier scoffed with intense derision. "At least I'm not a little ass kicker, Rumlow," he spat out a gob blood at the operative's boots.

Rumlow's nostrils flared, and he took a step forward, coiling his gloved hand around the asset's neck, fingers slithered across the pulse point until he ensnared the firm muscle into a constricting noose. "You want to see the little princess?" he hissed against the asset's ear, giving him no ease of release. "Look to the doorway…"

The deponent and enraged Winter Soldier whipped his head around, and stared blankly at the child cradled in Madame HYDRA's arms. Her rich brown eyes, were no longer full of life, but dead, almost black. She was dressed in a dark garments, and her angelic face held no more innocence. She was gone. His beautiful angel had been chained by the devil and turned into little demon. All he could do was mourn for her as tears glistened over his pallid cheeks.,

"No," his lips trembled into a frown, as he whimpered out her name, fear and anger consumed his body. His metallic hand lifted to reach for her like an anchor in an ocean's raging tempest. "Avora…" he cried, his voice distorted by the unease of tears, His bare chest was heaving with every sob that managed to slip from his lips.

She rested her head on the green haired woman's shoulder, ignoring him as her reconstructed mind created illusions that he no longer existed, that he was a ghost of her past, unimportant and irrelevant.

"Avora remember me…" he croaked out, his voice became weak as he felt a blow jostle the bones of his jaw. Rumlow hit him with firm punch, and his blurry eyes closed as exhausted took its told over him, but he still kept his blue eyes on her. His lips formed into a neutral line as blood seeped down his chin, and he drifted back into the darkness. Sobbing down his throat,he imagined that he was holding her little body in his shielding arms of flesh and metal.

Remember.

Home. It seemed to become a distant memory to her. When she was placed in a diminished hole of grand ball room located beyond the familiar corridors; she felt condemned, the first stirring of dread before delivering a performance. She had to prove her worth, dissemblance and dissemblance of humanity. When the gloved fingers of her handler dug into her skin, it made her feel like she was just a pile of dead meat waiting to be tossed to the ravaging dogs.

She twisted and jerked for release.

Avora had been utterly stripped bare. Wounded. Broken. There was no point of returning back to her old life, innocence was drained out of her. No sense of hope. She was trapped in a dark world -the choking tentacles of HYDRA—drowning her into the red pools of merciless tortures. It was like walking into the corridors of Hades; mind alert and heart pounding with anticipation. Deep beyond the fear, she wanted to see him again-the Winter Soldier, her friend and big intimating brother with a metal arm.

"Never show resistance, Avora. You must be strong." His deep baritone whispered gently in her ears, holding her trembling form close, as she buried her head into the broad muscle of his chest. Moisture leaked from her soggy brown eyes; dripping over the leather armored vest. He didn't react. Instead, he wrapped his metal arm, shielding her with a brotherly embrace. The girl dared herself to look up into his pale blue eyes, as he reflected his inner anguish like a cool plate of mirror belonging to a shattered mirror. He began threading his chromed fingers through her chopped strands, so gentle and soothing it lulled her to fall asleep against him.

Feeling safe under his warmth, Avora curled up into a fetal position, resting her head on his flesh shoulder, and drifted as she listened to his heart thumping in crescendo of peace and contentment.

"Move it!"

Sniffling a little in response of the threatening voice, Avora chanced a glance at Madame HYDRA, feeling the cold hand press over her stomach. The unrelenting touch made her queasy stomach churn. She closed her eyes, sealing off the tears-emotions made her weak-she had to become strong. Her bones jostled with a single jerk of cold pressure.

She'd been under lock down in a strange room for hours, and then dressed with the finest ebony silk and heeled shoes. They added rose to her ashen cheeks, and brushed her mussed hair before she had been given a decent meal in the dining hall. Now, she was standing in the middle bright stage lights; feeling commands drilled into her skull, embedded and hard to extract. It fried her ivory skin, burning deep her pulsing veins, dissolving the little amount of energy she had left. Her exposed skin sizzled and brown eyes narrowed as a twisted sense of malaise took the place of fear. She could smell the dank stench of evil lingering the shadows as her small form automatically displayed submission when she heard the paternal voice of her new father-the Director.

"This is a simple exercise, Avora," he assured in a calming muted voice from the table across her view. "We will start with basics of your training. Succeed each level and you be rewarded. HYDRA gives only the best to those who deserve it." He eased back in his chair, folding his hands together, and observed her vacant emotions. His sharp gaze looked at her tiny small clothed in the black dress, and her dark brown shoulder-length hair brushed neatly with a bow clipped in place. "You look very beautiful in that dress. Do you like it?"

Avora nodded in response. "Yes, sir." she blithered in automatic tone, stuttering and catching her voice. She corrected her stance, arms at her sides. A posture of submission.

Holding smug grin over his lips, the Director leveled his grayish blue eyes at her. "This is your home now, Avora. We are family and chains will not be broken."

She felt her heart pounding against her rib cage, blood ran thick in her veins. "What about my friend?" she asked in timid voice, tears began to swell in her eyes. "Is he part of our family?"

Breathing through his nostrils, the Director rose from the chair, "Let me make one thing clear," his voice shifted into a exposing threat as she withdrew a step back from his towering presence. "The Winter Soldier belongs to HYDRA. He is a weapon. Nothing else but a weapon that we use him to catch the bad people that threaten to hurt our family. What you think he is Avora, is a illusion…He doesn't feel anything."

Listening to those spiteful words, Avora shook her head, "You're wrong," she blurted out in defense. Tears flowed down her ashen cheeks. "He feels everything…" She gritted feeling a new surge of anger bubble inside her. Displaying her last whim of compliance."The soldier is not a weapon." she objected, with a fierce edge breaking the timidness out of her voice. It almost grew into a scream. The brown pools of her eyes darkened into ebony. Molten and engaged. An operative looming behind the chair aimed a gun at her, aligning her small body with steel. "He is my friend."

He eased back, appalled with her protest. He snapped his fingers, and Madame HYDRA emerged from the darkness and snatched her arm with a forceful merciless yank."It will take some time for reprogramming, but you will submit." His words had bitten into the air matching the displeased clench of his jaw. He looked down at Avora with a disappointed gaze, and turned away as the green haired witch hauled her up the wooden stairs and threw her small body into the polished floor boards.

"Let go of me." she spitefully retorted.

"You will learn how to respect our humility." Madame HYDRA hissed, scraping her green polished nail over Avora's cheek. "Unless you want to see your friend suffer in the isolation chamber?"

Avora felt her heart flopping, and plodded to a halt. Her stomach twisted as bile rose up her throat, burning and eating away at the thin lining. Her brown eyes overflowed with tears as strangled yelp managed to escape her lips the moment her jaw banged against the scuffed wood. Blood leaked from the spaces of her teeth and dribbled over her chin. "Please," she begged in a strangled wheeze as her ears dulled with a muffled thump of boots marching closer to her skull. A leather gloved hand grabbed a fistful of hair, jerking her head violently up as a eruption of screams ripped through her vocal cords. "I'll do anything...Don't hurt him."

Madame HYDRA dug her fingernails into the sculpt, and hissed. "You'll do as you're told, when you're told. Cry and you will feel pain. At first the training will be hard, but I know you won't give up the fight. It's in your blood to kill…You were created to become a killing machine. The new face of HYDRA. You are resurrected phoenix from the ashes of the great Red Skull." She released her hold on the tangles of hair, and listened to Avora choke out a few drops of maroon as satisfied smirk crept over her pale face. "Your blood is pure and your body is strong…You are a daughter of HYDRA."

Avora squeezed her eyes shut, and trembled into a curled form on the floorboards as salty tears mixed with blood. The serum entwined in torrents in her veins. Her eyes blared as splotches of red gathered in her eyes. The urge to kill grew massive in her mind as she felt heat searing in her bloodstream. Her bones felt torched sizzling as the serum merged with every cell and rewrote her DNA strands. It was ripping her a part on the inside and rebuilding the tainted pieces with power. Cold and relentless power. She rattled and shock against the floor, clawing into the wood, but pinned down by her superiors boot pressuring against her ribs.

Blood smeared across her face and heart jolted with erratic beats. Screams discharged with rabid pleas of mercy, tearing through her tiny shape. Tears spilled from her eyes with excruciating acceptance of the emergence of the serum taking hold of her. Avora reached out her hand to grab something to pull her away, but her muscles locked and a fever broke out. "NO!" she screeched viciously, thrashing against the floor as her fingers gripped the leather boot and moved upward to the exposed skin of Madame HYDRA's leg.

Bones crunched and the empowering stench of copper overcame her, the scent filling her airways and controlling her senses until a taste coated over her lips.

"Hail..." She panted out labored breaths, and clasped all her strength into the muscles of the leg. A snap of bone drove her into a black abyss as Madame HYDRA screamed out in pain. In her response, Avora snapped her darkened eyes open and looked at the green haired woman with no emotion, and whispered, "Hail HYDRA..."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

* * *

They told her one simple word.

_Neutralize._

Avora listened to the girlish screams erupted from the darkness. It didn't come from her. She could feel the thumping of a pulse against her finger tips. Her hands coiled over soft flesh and cracked bones. A heart beat. She felt a heart beat merging with the skin of her clammy palm. She listened to the struggling breaths, and felt the coldness of death ensnare her as resistance faded with a programmed command ingrained in her mind. Neither connection or emotion fussed in her. She had been given a chance to let loose as all entangling thought focused on one word. _Kill. _She could see the shadow of a body pinned against the pale light streaming the frosted windows, it' was somber and once served as a purpose of contentment, however, it became a shade of her new world—a monotonous gray caught in the divide of light and darkness.

The first glimpse she had caught of her prey was a running line of blood seeping into the cracks of the solid ground underneath her. Desolated brown eyes scanned over the red with murderous intent. She couldn't fight the impulses. It felt like raw carnage had been devouring her from the inside out. She wanted to depart from the shadows at the same time her vision was swimming in numb daze. She heard the harsh voices, sort of like lecherous chants of hunger waiting to become satisfied.

All sounds wandered through the rages of storms in her obscured mind and untamed instinct ravaged through all part of her small body. Blood roared in her ears, skull pounded and she enclosed her arm over a neck. Muscles had locked with bone. It was a test of trial and error. A session to allow her mind, body and spirit to fully accept the serum without the obstruction of her emotions. How could she make sense of what transpired around her? She was forced in submission through enduring stages of brutal compromise against her body. At those exact moments of having reaction against the automate process, as she tried to clutch at some of the distant memories trying to emerge from the gaps of her mind, Avora had become aware of the snarls of aggression emanating from the rawness of her throat.

Feelings her hands were visibly shaking against clammy flesh, the compulsion to kill overtook her, the thoughts of her past drifted further she clenched her teeth hard. The murmur of a plea formed in breathless syllables and drove her into a swirling vortex of pure red. That was the only color that coated over her tears as white hot pain that had been blazing in her head for the moment the needles pierced her skin had jaded into a chastened pulse across her temples and poignant agony was no more than twinge. However, everything was contrasting into vicious and fractured diverse.

Her body began to convulse as she recognize the words they had registered in her brain. Kill. She blinked, and tried to fight against the hold placed over her, tear blurred their faces and she couldn't react the touch. A wool fabric smothered over her lips, clogging her airways, each inhale drove a savage impulse deeper in her straining her. It was a smell of fresh blood, and it was suffocating her- distortions of faces became washed in crimson. Her head was cloudy, and she couldn't function her muscles to protest. She felt a warm and trickling sensation creep over her legs. Her dark eyes snapped down for a moment as the floor ripped apart, and she saw was a heap of shackled bodies drowning into the thickening chasm as the world crumpled into pieces. She felt everything. All the pain and sickness knotting in her stomach. They were butchering her on the inside, allowing the serum to guzzling the warmth-blood was turning into ice.

"It won't last," The Director said in a softer tone, his hand stroking down her neck. "Once your body summits to the pain it become immune to it..."

Avora closed her eyes, preparing herself, the bile in her stomach roiled. She shook her head, matted strands whipped against her pale cheeks, and she wanted to feel discontented from the imposing heat of a body pressed against her chest. It was another victim of HYDRA's inhumane methods, a abomination of failure who had been required for termination. "I don't want to do this..." Avora cried, tears streaming hotly down her gaunt cheeks. She it was wrong. Her eyes stung. The tears wouldn't stop their descent. She couldn't stop them. They were flooding down her face at disorderly and alarming rates, moistening her skin and washing away the smears of blood. "I want to go home..."

"Enough, crying." He chastised against her whimpering pleas. He tugged violently on her hair, jerking her head to the side, almost slamming her face into his knee. "You are showing me that weakness still exists in you, Avora. Prove to me that you can be strong and I will allow you freedom to go outside."

Freedom. It sounded inaccessible to her. For that ability to live without darkness fade as smoldering abhorrence slithered in her veins. Avora knew there was no escape from this world, and her body was adapting to the change and her innocence had dissolved, regardless of her defiance she obeyed the command when the cold muzzle of the gun pressed against her skull. She knew the safety had been taken off by a sound of a click rattling across her temples, and yet, she didn't blanch away from the scene as the Director's shadow mocked her with chance. Her life was hanging in the balance of his hands. All she knew was she needed to stay alive, even though blood would stain her hands. It became necessary to do what she was told without hesitation or compliance.

"If you fail to complete the task and try to fight your emotions. We will not hesitate to harm you. Insubordination cannot be tolerated." His voice was firm and hand clutched tightly over the gun. He gave her a hard look and with an abrasive tone he uttered out the instructions. "Do what you have been born to do, Avora," he stared down at her pale face, watching her body grow rigid with conviction. "Take a life."

Suddenly upon an rabid impulse of response to her superior, Avora's eyes darkened into a vacant shade, "By your command, father," she returned with no emotion in her voice. She waited for her permission to act. Then, while releasing a enraged snarl of contempt, allowed the other girl to roll onto the floor before pounding her skull with vicious blows and wrangled the neck once more. Choking noises of whistless pleas emerged from the paling lips. She didn't care. All that flooded in her mind was impulse to kill. She stared up at Avora afraid of her end.

"Finish this runt, Avora." The Director commanded with a edge of hostile intent. "Do not hesitate, my child."

She violently forced the girl's head backwards, twisted and waited for the ugly snap of detached bones. She couldn't let go of the lifeless body. She couldn't pull herself away. The taste of blood grew insatiable. She wanted more. _More._

The girl's body dropped to the floor and operative sentinels dragged the corpse away. She couldn't scream. The red, bright and lucid flooded over her vision. She slammed her fists into the floor, scraping her knuckles. The sensation of cold steel of a gun resting over her cheek vanished with pooling heat a the weapon discharged emptiness out of the chamber; it jarred Avora's senses to become awakened by the mindless haze of delirium.

Avora snapped her livid brown eyes viciously opened, burning with hunger and tears. She forced herself to avert her gaze, and tried to get her bearing as blotted images of red coated over her vision. "You have done exceptionally well, child." The Director said with an impressive edge in his love. He gestured a hand to Madame HYDRA who limped closer to the child with hardened malice. "Tell me what did you feel?"

Gasping with a heavy pitch of breath, Avora managed to blanch an inch back from Madame HYDRA. Her skin prickled as a shooting pain eruption in her veins. It was inside her. The mixture of instability and blood thirst flooded in her veins like rushing torrents of molten lava. Oozing and devouring. The Director was there, standing behind her. and his intimating, and fatherly presence sent feverish chills running down her spine. "I—I..." She hesitated as a dry sob threatened to emerge from the back of her throat. She felt her soul clawing against the sickness as she panted out silent seething breaths. "I felt nothing.."

They were playing with her head.

Her life was in the possession of HYDRA.

Finally, Avora looked up and there was no beauty in her brown eyes, just pure fused mania. She was transformed into a monster. HYDRA beaten her to the bone until she felt nothing. She became cold as winter's ice. "...just a pulse."

She locked her eyes on the gun, it only a second for her to ram her fist into his knee, and seize the weapon with fast reflex of movement. Her carnal instincts were arising. Drawing out heavy intakes of breath, she tasted the blood wash down her throat, and then she pointed the silencer pistol at a operative adjacent from the door. A rueful smirk crossed her lips and she imagined pulling the trigger and feeling the shock waves of power vibrate through her bones. Her face became emotionless, because it was programmed inside her to show no expression. Just vacancy. She pulled the trigger without looking at her target, and listened to the bullet explode and body dropped to the floor.

The Director asked her how she felt.

She looked down at the gun, and answered, "Dead."


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

* * *

His nerves fluttered, a moan peeled from his raw throat and he scrambled to regain awareness. The tendrils of pain drilled into his bare flesh, and he was pulled back into the red chasm, feeling the swishing tentacles of HYDRA writhe against his compromised body. His mind and soul was trapped in the merciless void, and there was no escape—no sense of release that overtook his thoughts. He was fighting against the terrors –the endless torment that kept his body feeling numb with every prick of a needle piercing in his veins.

"Get me out of here..." he seethed out, acid clogging his throat. His blue eyes glazed with fever as he searched for a resolve against the harsh light. A face emerged out of the blur of ice; the merciless eyes of Zola pinned him against a strong hold, forcing him to taste the sourness of blood escaping from his embroiled veins. He saw the sterile medical tools methodically aligned on the cart—the glass vials each labeled with an insignia of skull and squid tentacles. They represented his new home: Department X.

Everything became distorted as he entered another realm within his mind, pushing through the darkness before halting in front of a window pane. It lead into a dimly lit room where he watched a young scarlet haired ballerina twirling with grace and lethal precision on a wooden stage. Her poised limbs were covered with bruises and remnants of dried blood. Her ivory skin held the blanched tint of neglect, and the flares of defiance that welled her green eyes were dimmed from the mindless tortures of the extraction chamber.

His metal fingers traced over the edges of the glass, he intently stared into the visage of a young handsome man—a ghost of a good soldier and an earnest kid from Brooklyn: James Buchanan " Bucky" Barnes. He peered further into the mirror image; searching in the pale blue eyes and the bright, charming smile.

It wasn't his face anymore, just a shattered and twisted reflection of a condemned phantasm—a forgotten soldier who had never returned to his homeland. He had been reborn—remade—without the capacity for warmth, and emotional attachment towards humanity. The face in the cracked glass was a fractured memory of his true existence that hadn't been erased from his mechanistic dehumanization programming. He never smiled after that moment he had fallen off the speeding train—he had crashed and froze into the ice forever.

* * *

_He was trapped in a world filled with the spectrum of a dimming lamp light. Everything seemed unnatural at first; faces of fellow soldiers were blurred and the tempo of music hastened into a steady beat of somberness. He couldn't move; his heart and soul merged into a weave of desperation. The choice was given to him to chase after his desires—to embrace the friendship that was almost stolen from him by HYDRA. Steve had rescued him from the hellish laboratory, pulled him away from the teetering edge where a mindless void of obedience awaited below._

_Even though Bucky had felt his heart pounding for release, he was hesitant to recall the amount of courage he needed to face the nightmares once more. Friction surged in his veins and the utmost of desire redirected him closer to center of the polished dance floor, towards the wafting scent of whiskey lulling his senses. The lights from the wall mounted lamps guided his unsteady steps to the bar stool. He felt the sickness._

_He felt the constant aftershocks of damage that lingered in the violent pulses of his subconscious, he felt absent to the world around; unfocused and unstable—less alive. Finally, after summoning up his reserves of internal strength, Bucky halted in his steps and waited for a torturous moment to feel the recurring ache of his throbbing heart. "Fight it, soldier," he spoke under his breath, flexing his slacken jaw as the bitter taste of metallic rose up his parched throat._

_He remembered feeling the coldness sear deep into his fragile bones, his dilated blue eyes staring into an abyss of green haze; he became a captive of delusion–a new pet for the inhuman Doctor Zola to play with. That was until he found himself escaping the drifts of HYDRA and staring into the benevolent azure embers of Steven Rogers—except he wasn't the same skinny and sickly pale faced blond haired runt who had always been too dumb to not run away from a fight. Steve had been transformed into America's first super soldier—the sentinel of liberty. But no one would ever know the true Steven Grant Rogers, not like the way he did back in Brooklyn. They were brothers._

_After gaining enough momentum in his stiffened legs, Bucky pulled out a bar stool and sat down clumsily, resting his elbows against the wooden surface of the bar._

_He tempted to slouch just a little and looked feverishly at the pint of whiskey that had been prepared for him. Even though he was safe and among friends, the pain he had endured on the medical table had crippled his defiant spirit and he couldn't remove the violent images of young men being strapped down and infused with chemicals. He tried to resist the changes, after fully becoming injected with Zola's beta serum that made him a part of HYDRA; yanking and tugging through the leather restraints._

_"Hey, Buck," Steve spoke in a deep, soothing murmur, standing behind the young sergeant. He was dressed in his bronze US military uniform; golden buttons and Medal of Valor reflected in the hazy light that caressed over his angelic and chiseled features. His neatly blonde hair was parted off to a side—he looked so natural, strong and filled with burdens that Bucky could faintly see beyond the firm stare of spiritedly azure._

_It was undeniable to shove away the truth; everything had changed and Steve no longer needed to prove himself. He did the impossible and saved the bulk of a lot of brave men, liberating the captives from the HYDRA factory in the forest of Azzano because it was an admirable cause to finish, even without General Phillips consent. Steve had crossed enemy lines with his unfathomable determination and his large heart that had been measured and overlooked as small and insignificant on the written medical documents. Steve gave the soldiers of the 107th a chance to redeem themselves and to follow a new mission._

* * *

_During the late hours of the afternoon, listening to the cheers echoing through the camp, Bucky had watched his best friend—the little guy who had been pushed into trash cans all his life—take a stand in front of the rescued POW's. Steve stood on top of a jeep's hood, leather jacket ripped, boyish face smudged with dirt and ash, but his massive body was unyielding, his strong jaw clenched with determination and his crystallize azure eyes held a flares of defiance. The sunlight had retracted into his audacious gaze as he lifted the triangular shield of stars and stripes high above his shoulder._

_It was his moment of accepting the responsibility in bringing together a new force of heroes who didn't think of themselves as nobleman of liberty, but as a band of brothers. Steve witnessed their fighting spirits kick into overdrive, and he knew that they would be his special unit to end HYDRA's regime of terror. Without further thought, the kid of Brooklyn, the artist and friend of James Barnes, declared his mission to the world as Captain America._

_...Follow me into the heart of victory. Don't give up the fight. For united as brothers, we can do the impossible..._

* * *

_"Is everything okay, pal?" he asked, with his eyebrows furrowed into a concerned expression. Bucky felt his emptied stomach roil with tense and fierce eruptions. His shoulder jutted and bunged closer to his jaw. There was a rupture in the recesses of his memory; he was resisting the assuring grip of his best friend—allowing his body to rebel against human touch. He fought against the impulses to smash the glass and stab the shard into Steve's throat. His pale blue eyes became livid with pulsating hate towards the American uniform—mostly towards the patriotic colors of red white and blue—all he saw was the haze of red._

_Bucky tore his eyes away, tipping his head down, and took a sip of whisky blatantly, tasting the bitterness of yeast clog into his scratched throat. "Don't worry about me, punk," he dismissed with a hoarse chuckle, curving the full expanse of his lips into a tipsy smirk, patting the broadness of the captain's shoulder. "It takes more than a few HYDRA jerks to bring this Brooklyn kid down..." he drawled with his cocksure Brooklyn accent, masking his recurring pain._

_Taking another gulp of whiskey, Bucky resisted the urge as his temples pounded against the vibrations intruding his mind. His blue eyes devoured the tarnished glow of ember that stuck against his face. Then, his distant gaze drifted back to Steve, to his best friend that risked everything to save him from Zola. His slacken brow furrowed. "What made you come and find me?" he asked, distantly with eagerness in his regard to Steve's crestfallen expression._

_"You're my friend, Buck," Steve returned in a somber whisper, an honest gleam became caught in his crystalline azure eyes. With a graceful motion of his strong hand, his fingers clutched over Bucky's shoulder. A fleeting sense of hope increased as he stared down at Bucky's trembling hand, and his spirit wilted under the lingering shadow of HYDRA. He tried to ignore the runnels of despair in seeing his protective brother look so defeated and wounded. It was like he was staring into the eyes of a ghost. After a momentary battle of emotions, he found strength to voice the words that felt pinned against his heart, and steer Bucky out of the rages of the sickness. "You're all I got left of Brooklyn."_

_Bucky turned his head slightly, and looked at the war bond poster of Captain America. "Well, I've gotta admit...you gave them a hell of a run, punk," he appraised in a raspy voice. His pale lips upturned into a broadened smirk. Steve remained in silent dismay, observing his friend's struggle to diminish the agonizing succession of pain. He knew that the mental scars wouldn't so easily rid themselves from his friend's mind; Zola had done inhumane and twisted experiments–a consuming poison was running rancid in Bucky's veins. It was up to the young sergeant to detach himself from HYDRA's will. "I guess I can't call you the little guy from Brooklyn anymore..."_

_Steve's azure eyes locked onto him and he curved his lips into a sheepish grin, "Nah, it's still me, under all the muscles."_

_"I bet you're going to get all of dames," Bucky mirrored a small cheeky grin, with a mischievous glint in his eye."The ladies do love a man in a uniform...or in your case a monkey suit."_

_"The dames will have to wait," Steve sighed, looking dismally over his shoulder a few young ladies latching their arms over a lucky soldier who had a smug smile plastered on his face. Steve sighed in disgruntlement and set his eyes back at Bucky, and stared at the half-empty whiskey glass; his thoughts redirected; but still he fought to keep his emotions bottled in. His blue eyes lit with sincerity, in the moment he chanced to stare at Peggy Carter sitting with Howard Stark pass the division of cigar smoke and overly expensive perfume. He looked full of upmost uncertainty. He was distracted by regret, unsure and just plain hesitant to walk over there and ask the most beautiful and fiery woman he had ever met to dance. "Besides I am not a good dance partner, I always step on a lady's toes when I try to take the lead."_

_Bucky scoffed at the Captain's honest words. "You're unbelievable, Steve." he grunted, shaking his head in refusal. His pale blue eyes held an intense gleam as darkness swallowed the flecks light. His stare was torrid and filled raw vexation; almost like murderous glare of cunning wolf._

_He was changing into something caliginous, unstable and lethal. His addled and scattered thoughts were reserved by a constant, droning whisper of Zola's noxious voice, ordering him absently to respond to his urges of slaying everyone in the tavern and creating a blood bath. Sensing his intolerable and fundamental alterations, Bucky clasped his trembling right hand over his bruised wrist, squeezing the iciness out of his veins. It felt like he was about to self-destruct into a relentless pile of rage, his skin broiled with revolting heat and his throat closed, breath seemed constricted._

_"I need to get some air..." Bucky said in a heavy gulp, he instantly stood up, feeling the umbrage of pain compress into his chest, exhales came out ragged and erratic. Sweat dripped over his chiseled waxen features and glassy eyes filled with tears. He had to remove himself from Steve. "I've gotta to..." he stammered, his eyes flashed dangerously, and his ample jaw clenched. "...clear my head."_

_"Bucky," Steve gasped, his blue eyes flared with utmost concern; he tried to reach for his restless and tottering friend, but Bucky trudged away from the bar in fervent steps to the door; using his shoulder to ram into the thick and cold wood obstructing his unsteady path. "Buck.." Steve sighed out in disbelief lowering his head, and fighting against the array of tears prickling in his eyes. The tension in the air became cruel and unrelenting, he wasn't prepared for this strife and he didn't know how to fix that damage that had been done to Bucky. They had never been the same, so distant and unaware of their strengths and weaknesses. He refused to believe that his best friend was lost to him._

_Summoning up his valid and stalwart determination, Steve trained his passive eyes unabashedly at Peggy sitting with her elegance and beauty in a booth; her chocolate ringlets pinned back with red lace and her stunning ethereal features holding so much power that he felt it burn into his heart. He couldn't reclaim his torrents of affectionate desires for the ravishing British SSR agent, not when Bucky was on the verge of falling under HYDRA's maniacal shadow again._

_Steve wanted to march to the booth, with all reservations of courage and lead her onto the dance floor in front of everyone. But in that moment, Steve had to sacrifice that desire, and leave Peggy to dance with Howard, while he went out into the darkness to search for his friend._

_Feeling the world falter beneath him, Steve opened the door and stood in the glow of the fading light, inhaling the crisp air as snow descended from the darkened sky. He remained silent and steadfast, holding an observant stare on the parked army vehicles and fuel barrels. He felt the eeriness of the dire situation, a palpable force of disdain slamming against his chest, and he couldn't waver past his choice. Bucky needed him to stand at his side, to guide him back home and to never betray their bond as brothers._

_They were strong together—they were like stout, fearless and unshakable stallions who fought hard for their freedom and raced into blazes of the war, using their bodies as shields against the hailing storm of bullets and endless crimson rain._

_"Bucky, where are you, pal," he called out with desperate utterance. The frigid wind ghosted over his lips; he trudged another step away from the tavern, barely getting distance as his boots crunched against the fresh blanket of snow. He searched tenaciously for a sign of Bucky. All he found were shadows of black pine, crates of medical and food supplies waiting to be stored into the back of GMC 352 army cargo truck—the canvas tarp was billowing against the wind._

_Bowing his head in reverence, Steve felt his heart clench and his breath freeze before air escaped from his frowning taut lips. There was no turning back as he paced in clambering footfalls. He listened to gnawing cries of distress. Blood pumped faster in his veins, and his eyes watered against the condensation of the snowfall._

_Steve mashed his teeth into his chilled lip, hard enough to taste the sourness of blood staining against his throat."Hang on, Buck," he charged, his massive body going into full throttle of ignition. His glistening azure eyes steadied through clusters of whiteness, and hell bent senses alert as he followed the discerning noise of his friend's voice. "I'm coming..."_

_In the ambiance of the lurking darkness behind warehouse, Bucky pressed his back against the wall, his bent and exhausted posture caved into the confines of his uniform. Coldness penetrated and seeped into his throbbing bones; he drew his knees close to his speedily rising and falling chest. His heart was pounding and skin glazed with feverish sweat._

_He looked about the area in __disarray; __his impassive blue eyes scanning left and right. He allowed his blurry gaze to drift back to the caresses of warm light reflecting in the snow—the only illusion of hope that he desperately grasped onto when violent images reached succession in his mind. _

_...Nothing seemed familiar..._

_When he tried to turn his neck, it almost felt like shards of glass were puncturing into his slacken muscles. He blinked, the pain was overpowering his skull, and a numbness circulated in his veins. He was paralyzed without recognition of the voice echoing back from the muffled cries that ripped from the depths of his chest. Finally, he parted his lips and recalled a sum amount of strength to answer back, "Steve..."_

_The super soldier reacted swiftly to the voice; fear ratcheted in his chest as he pushed his muscular legs frantically through the snow banks with stern momentum without losing sight of his friend's shivering body. His thoughts ran livid, betraying his heart and devouring his hope with vague and intense images of Bucky's lifeless body mangled against the wall. Blood was leaking out of his mouth; he was dying...Fading into the ice and darkness._

_In those consuming moments of dread, Steve's eyes adjusted quickly to the amber light casting over the wooden pile to decease the shadows. His breath ceased to flow in his lungs and his heart sunk into his churning gut as he stared, bewildered, at the visage of Bucky huddled against a wal; blood dripping from his pallid lips and his bright eyes redden with dejection._

_Steve moved in slow, tentative strides, and held out his hand to the disheveled soldier before him, "Bucky," he sensed that his brother was trying to disconnect himself from his shadow. He persisted, never once thinking about giving up on the young man who had sacrificed so much to give him a chance to fight." C'mon Barnes, take my hand and I'll get you back on your feet again, pal."_

_"You can't help me, Steve," Bucky murmured with a hoarse tone, his lips curling into a grimace. His face contorted into an aggressive demeanor, and his straggled breath seethed from his clenched teeth. As he dismissed Steve's hand, Bucky rested his weary head on his knees. He couldn't pretend nor ignore the fact the he clearly wasn't fit enough to wear a uniform. That he was a part of divergent—a vanishing and demented soul who was condemned to rot into the nightmarish hell Zola had pulled him into when ice coated his bones. "I'm no good to you anymore."_

_"What are you talking about, Buck," Steve regarded him with a tender stare. He crouched down to Bucky's level and he knew something was utterly wrong. "You're the bravest man I know; you taught me how to stand up to bullies, and now you're letting doubt put you on the ropes." He firmly intoned. "You can spend all night out here, but I'm not leaving you." He shifted his gaze to the direction of the tavern and tried his best to forge a trusting smile on his chiseled face as he watched the battle raging in Bucky's eyes._

_Bucky managed to nod, but tucked his arms tightly over his chest, feeling the impulsive desire to flee. When Steve tried to grasp his shoulder, he lurched back and dropped his head; obscurity ensnared his face and his blue eyes glowed with unbidden, baleful stubbornness. "You're needed back in there, Captain America," he spoke in intolerable volume of pain, forcing his gaze away from Steve's placating face. "I'll be fine, Steve." He took a deep breath. "It's just taking awhile to fight this..." He resolved his stare back onto the captain, his fogged blue eyes pleading."You've gotta leave me out here. I don't want to hurt you."_

_Discerning the vindictive edge resounding back into his ears, Steve creased his brow into hard perturb lines. He felt a little disturbed. His expression grew crestfallen and eyes retained sadness. "Hurt me," he mustered out a breath, looking directly into Bucky's deteriorating gaze. "You would never lay a hand on me. You took care of me like a big brother and you were always there when I couldn't pick myself up." Steve lifted his hand, and gently eased his palm over Bucky's shoulder. "I would've been lost without you, Buck."_

_"Now, I'm the one who's lost," Bucky managed to whisper faintly out in a nonchalant response, his lips stifled into a trace of a smirk. He looked up into Steve's brotherly gaze, and he found purpose again—a reason to put on the uniform and follow his new captain into the jaws of death, because without each other, they would have never discovered the strength in their bond that had always been alive before they were soldiers. He couldn't deny that he needed Steve to guide him through the storms, and with that, he made a promise to follow Captain America—his friend and sword against the darkness until the end of the line._

_With that, Bucky straightened onto his boots and looked up at Steve with a glint of redemption in his eyes. "You're still a stupid and stubborn punk for giving two cents about jerk like me..."_

_"I know, Bucky," Steve clutched his shoulder, jerking the muscle a little bit; a genuine and relieved smile casting over his features."Let's have another drink. It's on me this time."_

_"What's the occasion?" Bucky asked gravelly, blinking the flakes of snow out of his eyes. He leaned against Steve's frame, feeling an arm support his sagging weight as they began to walk back into the trail of warmth._

_Steve shrugged, holding a smile. "I dunno...Maybe finally having my friend back."_

* * *

The Winter Soldier awoke to the softness of bristles stroking beneath his nose. A coating of shaving cream foamed over his feverish skin; every sense jolted like live wire as he breathed in the minty scent. Utterly dreading the encroaching and relentless ice, he screwed his eyelids shut; fighting against the coldness penetrating deep into his system.

Sometimes his body compromised the jabs of pain, sometimes he unleashed anguished filled cries—feeling his exposed humanity being stripped away—thread by thread.

During the early years of subjection and imprisonment in the Red Room, and after undergoing torturous operations and excessive brutal training, he had been forced to allow the hybrid serum of the malignant Armin Zola to ravage through his blood—devouring him until he felt nothing. There was no distant relief.

* * *

_"I want you to relax, Sergeant Barnes. I need to extract information from your mind."_

_Regressing against the thralls of pain consuming his veins, Bucky was strapped mercilessly down on an operating table. Harsh light reflected over the slacken muscle of his pectorals as metal clamps fastened over his bruised torso. He couldn't move. He felt sick. Bile was rising up his throat as he tried to fight against the release of vomit. He wanted to fight. "I will never let you win, HYDRA pig," he snarled out a heaving breath of defiance. His blue eyes were livid and clouded with rage, his bristled jaw clenched and his hand tried to slip out of the leather restraints._

_"Where the hell am I?!" he roared, his voice think with contempt as he stared into the dimness of the room. One breath was released, warm trickles of tears slathered down the slope of his jaw. He could barely grasp a hold of reality, it was like he had been ambushed by his nightmares—everything was transparent and coated with red. The braving moment of defiance sank into dread. Warmth became absent in his veins, needles pricked the raw skin of his muscles. He couldn't scream out for Steve—he was voiceless in those moments in becoming raveled into fear. His temperature was dropping into kelvin rate of coldness. When Zola's sterile hand clutched his wrist, it almost felt like his pulse was being drained. There was a distant roar of fire banking inside him until every fiber became numb and the lines of tears that splotched over his ashen skin froze._

_"The pain you will receive will hurt at first, but you will get used to submission, Sergeant Barnes."_

_Responding to the vile monosyllabic German voice humming in his ears, Bucky frantically searched for his resolve in the slants of murky light. He asked in a hoarse and restrictive voice, "where's Steve?" He demanded, in a slight wheeze, only having a small measure of strength to spit out those discernible words as a slow trek of blood sloped down his parched throat. At first Bucky was unsure if his torture session was another replay of his collapsed memory; the dissolving shadows cloaked over the room made the world seem unfocused like an unhinged mirror._

_Seizing the opportune moment to destroy the young sergeant's hope of freedom, Zola circled the table with meticulous steps, observing the defeated look that had threatened to gain succession over the chiseled lines of Bucky's paling face._

_"Your friend is dead..." There was no trace of empathy in his taunting voice. "He remains are now lost in ice. The great Captain America failed his mission. HYDRA has begun a new world order...Starting with dissecting weakness out of the human element."_

_Aggrieved, blue eyes stared emptily at the doctor; realization struck him. "No," Bucky gasped, drawing up sharp seething breaths. He slammed his clenched fist against the edge of the table, denting the metal. Resurfacing anger roared in his veins; he felt the violent urge to rip out the doctor's vocal cords as tears stung in his eyes. His heart was breaking, tearing into shreds. His lips quivered into a babbling expression of utter anguish. He could barely contain his cries; streaks of water glazed his blemished skin and pain thickened his chest oppressively._

_Bucky slammed his eyes shut, his chest rising and falling at an alarming rate. He unleashed estranged howls for his friend. "Steve..." he sobbed, looking up at Zola with urging eyes. "He can't be dead...Not my friend...Not my brother."_

_"Ah, but he is Sergeant Barnes," Zola diminished his hope, removing Captain America's helmet out of a crate labeled "classified". He held it up to the light with a twisted smirk of complacency. "This was found in the Atlantic waters surrounding Greenland. It's just relic—a memory of his greatest failure."_

_Enraged by the sick mockery of his friend's sacrifice, Bucky abruptly thrust his hand up to snag the helmet from Zola's grasp. "That doesn't belong to you, sick bastard..." he felt his breath clogging as a sharp point of needle punctured his skin. Blood was collecting in the IV tube and his skin was changing into a bluish tinge. He didn't possess the strength to fight, his body was shutting down, but he tasted the tears melting over the warmth of his lips. His eyes dimmed into blue crescents as he set his blurring vision on the helmet resolving into light. "Steve..." His voice faded into a wispy breath, and his heart rate lowered. His pulse stopped and eyes closed as his promise slipped from his dormant lips. "I'll bring you back home..."_

* * *

Confusion invaded the corners of his awareness until the Winter Soldier felt the coldness searing into his bones, while hands weaved and meandering over the exposed muscle of his chest. He didn't twitch and squirm in reaction to the merciless touch as voices buzzed in the empty spaces of his mind. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to escape from the harsh orders. He felt like a brick in the wall that they hammered with every ounce of pain until his body and will solidified into the cement, secured with the blood of his victims.

He was trapped in the space—a mindless haven of distortion and numbness. Inside, he was a hot mess of emotional outbursts, and his warring soul was sliding on the thin ice of a frozen wasteland—he would fall into the cracks and slip out of his depth and out of his mind as he would claw those shards of ice until blood poured out of his fingers. The wall emerged from the dark waters, barricading him from the warmth of sunlight. Relentless and biting coldness was all he felt every time he fell back into the ice.

It was the second phase of his desensitization session before he would become thrown into a stasis capsule. Time would become stolen from him once again.

His mission was complete. Avora belonged to HYDRA. He felt a sense of regret invade his heart; he gave his oath that he would protect her—save her from a cold future of being a weapon. He failed her. Deep in the recess of his addled mind, he wanted to free her from this cruel and inhumane life. Her soul had already been sold away when her grandmother signed a contract to ally with the Red Skull in her own blood. He couldn't prevent her from feeling the ongoing pain—tasting blood and feeling life fade into her little hands. No, he knew Avora was lost, broken and unmade. The revelations of her fate struck him hard like a killing stroke, digging into every fiber until his heart became leaden with a heavy guilt.

At first, it was a calming aroma that permeated the air. Everything was a vogue blur against the harsh white light reflecting over his bare chest. His metal hand reacted to the touch of latex tracing over the sharp clench of his broad jawline. He didn't like to have someone invade his space. A c*** impulse overtook him, however he remained stoic. His pale blue eyes became dilated and still—lifeless.

Stray tresses of sodden brown hair fell over his ashen features as he looked distantly at the steel grate in the wall. He was waiting for the smoke to emerge—an airborne sedative that left him feeling comfortably numb as he acutely listened to the random voices of his timid handlers. Tears cascaded down his gaunt cheeks; an emotional reaction to the dulling ache flooding through his body. Liquid fire. For a few seconds, he couldn't lift his eyelids.

He parted his lips just enough to release a deep and gravelly rumble out of his chest. "Where is Avora?" he demanded, monotonously, struggling not to snarl. The frothing cream dripped aimlessly over the curved edges of his mouth. The taste intermixed the permanent tang of cold rust that latched over his blue eyes dimmed into a livid color of tarnished steel. He leveled his glinting stare at the frail man in a white coat.

His chrome knuckles aligned into a tight fist. He listened to the amplified echoes of screams wavering through the dark corridors. His exposed, scarred pectorals constricted under the hefty leather straps pinning him down. His mouth creased open as the acid drip of vehemence rose up his parched throat. A fever was brimming in his veins. He was on the brink of tearing the restraints; every muscle of his body thrashed against the chair. He had to find her.

"Where is she?" he hissed through clenched teeth. "Tell me where they brought her..." His slacken jaw tightened enough for the wary eyes of the assistant to see the definition of bone. His metallic hand was edging to grab the razor. "Скажи мне сейчас (Tell me now)," he demanded, ravenously. There was an evident threat rupturing in his voice, and the man caught in his feral gaze knew that the Winter Soldier could jab the blade into his jugular within a few seconds.

"They've...They've...Took the girl into the ISO chamber. That's all I know...I swear it." The smaller man was trembling under the cold and severe glare of steel and ice. The Winter Soldier lashed violently, his muscles ripping the restraints off his bare form. The smaller man staggered backwards, his face dotted with sweat and his heart pacing with the same rhythm of the assassin's murderous stride of intimidation. There was no escape from the wrath of HYDRA's wraith. Falling into a muddled state of hysteria, he crashed into the cart as the metallic arm shadowed over his white sleeve. "Please..." He sucked back a heavy gulp of air. He couldn't look away from the icy relentless glower of death staring back at him. The unblinking eyes pierced into his skull. "I have a family...I'm only doing my job."

The Winter Soldier quickly swiped the razor, and latched his merciless stare on the man's throat. He lunged with direct assault like a strike of lightning, blue eyes flashed with ruthless power. His fingers dug into muscle as he pinned the man down, crushing his weight into the breakage of bone, his metal hand coiled around his neck and squeezed to clot the veins. The Winter Soldier's face was just a breadth away and his glacial eyes filled with cold absence. He clutched the razor in his hand, tresses of hair fell over his hollowed cheeks, and a growl of menace dripped from his scowling lips. Before he went in for the kill, he sliced out the cries of horror from his victim. "So I am..."


	22. Chapter 22

**{Chapter 22}**

There became a sense of abandonment residing in her veins; Avora sat as a captive in the darkened solitary room; no source of light was present. Hours had passed since she executed her first orders. She followed the Director's commands with ingrained precision to achieve succession, instead of expected failure. The recesses of her addled mind were filled with harrowing obstruction.

Her senses were lucid, and small body felt distressed. Fighting against the feral urges infused in her veins, she edged closer to the door, scraping her palms against the cement, ignorant to the searing numbness that followed in the wake of pain.

She focused her brown irises on the latched, effortlessly lifting her weight off the floor; and she managed to grasp the lock; jiggling it with a desperate attempt to escape. Remnants of blood that seeped from her marred palms had smeared the rusted chrome, as she tugged to break the hinges off. Then, she felt the unknown approach of menace prickling in her veins. It was a reserve of unbridled power that resisted control, it siphoned through her blood, pulsing into her muscles at a rapid pace.

Feeling a sense of disrepair possessing her thoughts, the child refused to become plagued with unstable bombardments of horrific and morbid images of the young girls dressed in school uniforms, practice targets she had been ordered to execute without giving into the approach of resistance. Icy surges of harbored panic didn't relent, as she crashed to the ground when her limbs failed as thralls exhaustion passed through her disheveled body; clutching the handle while her small form was huddled against the metal paneled door. She felt detached. Her world was collapsing into torrents of blood, they desolated her from comfort and security of a home based environment. Her family was gone, but encroach of the nightmares remain locked in the recesses of her frantic mind.

There was a limited thirst of vengeance pulsing in her veins, something that untamed and daunting to submit against. She felt a phantomous tumult shadowing her thoughts; it was awakening, and feeding on her surges of desperation. For moment, she was subdued into a delusions state, her body immobilized and her fingers resettling on the ground. It was possession of sense of control, she was a vessel, and each thought steered distant memories to reemerge as she unconsciously dabbed her fingers into the smears of blood and begun to recreate an symbol that was ingrained into her.

With the splaying grace of her trembling hand, she painted the image with blood, molding it with detail as red and slate merged into a deformed face of demon._ Hail HYDRA..._Her tampered mind chanted. Muddled with a feverish haze clouding her senses, she reeled back toward the door.

Her resolved veered back to the floor, brown eyes instantly locked clarity onto the image of red. Only to discover that the face designed in her blood was familiar...There was connection. Yes, she felt a bonded to it. Something that meshed her past and future. Something that resided within her veins. It was a revelation of her destiny. The Red Skull. She couldn't take her eyes away from it, as a slew of shadow engulfed the bunker, and the approach of eliciting whispers that echoed her back into a devoid- a fathomless abyss where death, power and ruthless hunger consumed her.

_"Do not fear what has been granted to you, little girl..." She listened to the measure of malice and spite rolling off a German tongue. The hollow bones of red bled through the shadows, and Avora knew that was she about to have an audience of the nefarious, inhumane leader of HYDRA. The Red Skull. His demonic visage emerged from her nightmares, feeding off of her dread._

_"I have been waiting for this, my beautiful granddaughter..." He conferred, his soulless gaze narrowed at her sheared, mussed brown locks, and youthful ivory skin. She was a delicate flower, so young and full of purpose to resurrect his lifeblood, by draining hers. '"And you are a a very beautiful vessel carrying my existence. A power that will never submit to humanity's errors, it will only grow if you accept it."_

_He outstretched his leather gloved hand, fingers coiled to claim her injured hand. He regarded her with a deaden stare, his dark orbs glinting in the hollowed sockets of his skeletal face. Avora was hesitant to accept his hand; the Skull was a victimizing and demented monster, not someone that eased her to trust in him. He wasn't her snow angel-he wasn't the Winter Soldier. "Do not refuse me, child."_

_The hand was threatening to snare her. No. She couldn't accept it. "Please...I don't want this, Sir."_

_His eyes burned into molten slate, and boned features crackled with a displeased expression. "I see that you have resistance, no matter," he hissed at her, and with slow recoil of his hand, he granted her a chance to comply. "It's only a matter of time for your evolution to grant me what is required to emerge into this failed world once again...You will not refuse my ascension to our promising resurrection, isn't that right, child?"_

Avora felt the urge to scream against this terror induced delusion; her heart's palpitations grew into frantic paces as she desperately tried to avert her eyes back to the haze of light.

* * *

_"Bucky!" Steve emitted out a beckoning call, tears gleamed heavily in his crystalline blue eyes. Muscles stained as he tried to reach, pinning himself closer to the edge of the train car, hinges of the blown off door dug into his shoulders. With much gravity of effort he managed to slide his full weight towards his best friend. "Hang on..." Wind lashed over his face, and his jaw tensed against the wake of coldness. His lips quivering as pitches of desperate breath frosted out, his gaze never left Bucky. "Don't let go..." his breathless voice urged, and his gloved hand stretched into the drifts of falling snow. "Buck, c'mon grab my hand...'"_

_Every fiber of his body, commanded him to reach, his bloodied fingers almost brushed a desperate touch over the tips of Steve's gloves. It was so close...Then, the chrome rail broke off, and his lost his grip in the instant gravity had dragged him away from Steve._

_"No!"_

_Steve..._

_It was like falling into a vortex of endless white. Tears dispelled in his blurring grayish azure eyes, as Bucky resumed his intent focus on the bridge, watching glints of the train vanish into a wall of harsh sleet, obstructing paleness of the dimming sky. Fear had claimed him, and he tried to call out for Steve, but strain on his throat became unbearable; he was voiceless from screaming._

_Everything seemed distant and frozen as his thundering heart clenched with frantic pants of breath; his body felt the pressure of the air, crushing into his muscles, blood seeped from his marred knuckles as he tried to grasp onto a jagged piece of rock-anything to prevent him from dropping into the icy ravine._

_Sudden impact broke his fall, and his arm twisted. Using the full reserves of his diminishing strength, Bucky mustered up enough of his effort, and gripped the crumbling edge._

_Remnants of rock shards nicked his face, and his left hand desperately grasped onto the crumbling edge, muscles tore and bones snapped. He refused to stare at the damaged limb, only catching a glimpse of flesh bruising underneath his torn winter jacket._

_He pressed his chest, his muscles scraped over the rocky surface that his eyes water as a grimace shrouded over his paling, chiseled features. He summoned up the last reserves of his strength to push through his limits; but the throbbing was impacting over his limbs. The metallic taste of blood thicken a glaze over his tongue, and he felt the blow of death penetrated through his bones. He couldn't speak, scream as the world was crumbling and his vision blazing with thralls of pain. He waited to fall._

_'Why did I go for Steve's dumb shield?' his weighted thoughts conceived, as he tried to find meaning in the regrettable choice he'd made. A pent of anger became a cold flame devouring his defiance. He didn't want to accept that he wasn't going to be there for Steve; he had broken his promise he'd made to Sarah Rogers, he would never see Steve ask Agent Peggy Carter to dance...Those were be just glimpses of his dreams that were starting to fade out with his release of pained tears._

_'I did it to protect him...Couldn't let them take Stevie from me...Couldn't watch the dumb punk fall...'_

_His stiffened fingers were glazed with blood; he was losing his grip, slowly edging closer to the mouth of the abyss. He choked on breath; setting his resolve on his left arm, it seemed mangled, ripped from the socket as rusty strains of blood smeared over treads of his navy blue sleeve. He felt sick. Through his bruised and bloodless lips, he released a shuttering cry, knowing that he needed to remain brave, stalwart for the last fight of his life. He didn't want to surrender, to face the cold ends of his fate that awaited for him below._

_Some part of him knew that in war there's always causalities, and he was fortunate enough to embrace the miracle of Steve's transformation, to follow the determined steps of Captain America and to see his little brother finally stand up to the bullies. Steve rescued him from Zola's operation table, he never took a moment to consider that he was alive because his best friend never gave up searching for him._

_Casting a hollow, tearing gaze down at the ice, Bucky accepted his choice and allowed his grip to slide, it was a slow descent, but he was too numb to feel the pain coursing in his pain. He closed his eyes and whispered into the snowy air, the broke plates of ice as he sank into darkness, with surge of hope that Steve would call his name again. __"Until the end of line..."_

* * *

_Until the end of line..._

The reproach of pain flared in his veins, replays of those memories raddled through his mind; he couldn't regain focus. Everything felt daunting to embrace; maybe it was trick of delusion, since his mind had been rewired several of times during preparation before falling into cryo phase. Regardless, he had a mission to finish—Avora.

With his rooted stance was pinned in front of metal door; he turned his resolve intently over flickers of light reflecting against cement. Everything felt absent to him; almost fractured. His pale blue eyes were cold with hollowed malice. He was searching for an outlet; the right direction that would lead him back to the little girl. Stillness crept over his obscured face; he commanded his body to remain frozen as darkness enveloped over his Kevlar tactical gear.

The Winter Soldier felt the coldness solidify over his bristled jaw, as he tried to subdue his thoughts until awareness clashed through his strained, abused body. He could taste a metallic tang lingering in his raw throat, but it wasn't his blood.

He knew he shouldn't have killed the assistant. It was resistance against his superiors; but his heart sped up in his chest, drawing him back to her as if he was being pulled by a magnetic force of energy through the dense corridor. He couldn't fight the intense urges, those assailing benevolent emotions of thrumming in his veins that commanded him willingly beyond the restriction zone and through the murky shadows of the labyrinth.

It seemed like a subconscious reaction harboring his perspective to raw awareness as he paused in methodical paces, scuffing his boots into the flecks of muted light caress above his current position.

Under the disheveled tresses of unkempt hair, with a glint of reserved malice, his steely azure eyes intently traced over the iron walls of narrow corridor, as he double-checked the darkened area; with his stature poised and readied, his gaze aligned over rows of doors. It was poorly lit, flickers of fluorescent light reflected over the metal panels, revealing only glimpses of moving shadow.

Parting his lips to emit graveled breath, the Winter Soldier remained silent to the approach of heavy footsteps. Was this a testament of his loyalty to a small child that showed affection towards him? He was trained not to compromise with emotions, to hold not sentiment that he wouldn't allow to breach pass his hollowed mechanisms of a disused heart. His pledge was to the Soviet nation-to HYDRA, not to a orphaned who had deemed him as her protector-снежный ангел.

His senses ignited against the pungent stench of blood that wafted off his Nomex tactical uniform, carbon coated with ebony, reinforced leather, the second skin of an Soviet operative; secured against the dense sculpt of his carved torso, in which he'd swiped from the armory room, and as resistance surged into the valves of his decelerated heart, the Winter Soldier crouched down low; breezily scanning his metallic glare over the locked doors that held no signs of admittance as two armed sentries carrying sub-machine guns formed an tight stack within his range of infiltration.

When he neared the furthest corner of the narrow hall he froze in mid-step and unblinkingly pinned his glacial blue eyes on rusted bars, catching flecks of tarnished light gleaming over the iron paneled walls.

Silhouettes of vacant cages eclipsed the obstructed area, as the Winter Soldier stalked closer to the corner; his rigid metal thumb fingers poised against his knife. The murderous glint in his keened glacial eyes coaxed the darkness, as he methodically advanced towards the directive point.

Taking a vague moment to recalculate his approach, the Winter Soldier slipped a combat knife out from the strap attached to his vest, gripping his chrome fingers into taunt clutch. Aware of the inhabitants behind the closed doors that he stalked passed, his pale blue eyes trailed over.

A chorus of harsh whispers reached him, not too far for his fox-like ears to decipher the alarmed panic in the tone of the armed sentries. "Раздел-1 не отвечает.(Unit-1 is not responding.)"Calmly he slipped into an alcove, becoming one with the shadows as they welcomed its agent. Azure orbs narrowed into icy slits as they assessed and observed ahead.

"Связь должна быть вниз. Что-то случилось ...(Communications must be down. Something must have happened…)The tremor of unease in the voice of the nameless sentry set him on alert. The element of surprise was crucial to the success of this incursion; stealth was paramount and discovery would be a costly factor to its outcome. "Стоять на своем. У нас есть заказы; ничто не прошли мимо нас.Держите девушку ограниченном." (Stand your ground. We have our orders; nothing gets passed us. Keep the girl confined.)

Muted rage brimmed beneath the surface of his stoic posture of deathly intent. The darkness in what remained of his beating heart sang to him like a siren beckoning his actions while a fiery malice rushed through his veins. Well hidden, its only evidence resided in the coldness of his dilated eyes focused upon his targets—waiting and assessing.

Once the sentries showed him their backs, the siren's call became a scream waging against the pounding of an exhilarated pulse in his ears, and he was upon them like a wolf seeking to devour its unknowing prey. The first to fall felt a cold and merciless mound of metal wrap itself around his neck; like a serpent entangling its foe, it stole the breath from the sentry's lungs and before his lips could forge words in a desperate attempt to sound the alarm, his mouth was covered by a gloved hand enfolding around his jaw before he was pulled into the secured choke-hold.

Merciless and unyielding, he was cold as death; he felt the sentry's struggle cease in his grip just as the second became aware of his hostile presence. "_She will taste the air of freedom, just as you never will."_ His lips pulled into a sneer as the second sentry instinctively raised his weapon aimed towards him. Wordlessly, he pulled the familiarly sharp object from the sheathe of his vest and hurled it with morph speed; watching as the knife struck the sentry's shoulder, pinning him against the wall. _"She does not belong to anyone…"_ With the second of his targets momentarily restrained, Winter Soldier discarded the limp weight of the other sentry in his arms and wasted no advantage as he rushed and retrieved his knife with a vicious pull. The sentry gasped with unspoken pain.

The scent of copper filled his senses—pungent and intoxicating as a red haze overcame his vision at the sight of the crimson fluid bursting from the opened wound. Enthralling, an unsatisfied hunger to end the corrupt life in front of him, glinted in his eyes. The sentry merely stared at him with wide, bewildered eyes, "Вы! Это ты! Системы охранной—!(You! It's you! Intruder—!)

The blood stained blade was at the sentry's throat in a heartbeat with warning, silencing his hazardous cry for aid before it could reach more ears. _"She will be free of these walls of despair." _His glacial blue eyes shimmered with unrelenting determination—staggering and intimidating, the sentry took no chances in conceding defeat as he squirms free and draws his 9mm pistol from his holster.

Before he could take aim, the blade found its way deep into the muscle of his right thigh, tearing through ligament which produced a blood-chilling scream and a barrage of gun-fire which echoed down the narrow dark corridors.

"_And no one will stop me for ensuring that."_


	23. Chapter 23

**{Chapter 23}**

The shadow of death always traced his steps, darkness never receded when flecks of light tried to bleed through the grayish chasms of his nightmarish captivity. Resisting the control that was branded against his heart became a taxing process to relent against, the vivid scales of red obstructed the right level of clarity as he settled a steadied glare on the body squirming underneath his weight. In a second of lifted mercy, his chrome fingers responded to the automatic impulse of terminating the deviant.

Static collected in his mind, as voices of his handlers reactivated his killer instincts to extract breath from a targeted victim. He delivered brutal pressure over the sentry's throat, fingers molding over a throbbing vein that was bruised with remnants of his merciless strength. He displayed no hesitation as impulses of rage had fueled through his blood. Every pulse siphoned with relentless urges to execute the obstacles that blocked his path.

Chokes of breath deafened in his ears, as he refused to allow the unconscious body drop inches at his boots. He wanted to relish into all of the unhinged emotion that stirred within his depths. A trail of blood was left in the wake of his dark path, as he shifted his momentum forward, his enhanced senses turned into biometric scanning; he became highly alert to the enforcing obstruction that waited for him around the corner.

Inhaling the stench of pongy sweat that the Winter Soldier recognized that taint of fear reeking from the passed out operatives behind a busted pipe. Scowling to the evident of his attack, he brandished his knife and held it with a firm clench while being fully aware that HYDRA personal were assembling down the corridor to prevent him from breaching the ISO chamber. He froze in midstep, his face grew dormant as darkness settled over the chiseled sculpt of his bristled jaw. He was anchored to the ground, motionless in the shadows; and only allowed the faintest of blue light to reflect over his feverish skin and the plates of his metal arm.

Hearing a scream of distress tagging his senses, he automatically crouched down, low to his haunches with balletic ease and composed a measure of patience to remain potent in his elevating pulse. He needed to recalculate his direct approach, time was limited and he felt a strange vapor looming in the shadows: a ghost was present to expose, something that he remembered feeling in a distant life.

_"You gotta save her, Buck,"_ A voice within him stirred as echoes of memory grew potent to relent against. The recall of his conscience possessed a measure of hope to use as his source of resilience. He looked back to the darkness, every shade detached as white light bled through. Banishing all impulses to resist, he focused on a solitary figure emerged from the chasms of his locked down memories...A tall soldier emblazoned with the patriotic colors of red, white and blue: the symbol of unconquerable liberty: his freedom reflected back into his distortions of his addled vision._ "Finish the mission, Buck, prove to them that no messes with a kid from Brooklyn."_

"I'm not a kid from Brooklyn," he growled in a raw declaration, his throat seized up to deliver an objection as the phantom haze of that distinct face kept him locked into a tangible moment, it became inescapable to venture out of, everything felt real as the blond haired American soldier mounted himself against the beam of light shining through a contortion of pipes. He blinked as the man's chiseled and boyish visage possessed a desperate twinge in his leashed up spirit. He couldn't regard the intensity of stare that pinned his body to remain impassive as rims of glacial blue in his eyes retracted light, he searching beyond the obscurity tangling over him. "I'm nobody..."

_...First, we will break you on the inside, it's a lesson that you must learn. After all, you belong to HYDRA, and when your evolution is completed, you will not be human enough to feel anything..._

_"You know damn well who you are, Buck,"_ The taller soldier grounded out, firmly. His fierce blue eyes blazed with defining truth. He was an untouchable illusion that the Winter Soldier's disconnected mind had conjured up, nothing more than a chimera to evoke a sense of humanity to return. A leather gripped hand reached to clamp his shoulder, as a phantom sense of brotherly warmth returned. _"Don't let em' beat you...Fight for her and yourself. Be that soldier who always raced into the jaws of death with me...Be James 'Bucky' Barnes."_

Each timbre of the soldier's unbidden voice recalled memories that begun to repossess all the uncertain, unsustainable thoughts, and he tried to bury everything down into the cold fathoms, refusing to give into the starving desperation of remembering a time before he fell into a passage of frozen death.

* * *

_"Steve..."_

_His voice strained as screams died out in those arduous moments, Bucky felt bones jolting as gravity forced his body to slice through solid contortion of branches attached pine trees shadowing over the edge of a frozen ravine._

_Scratches became visible streaks of red over his bruised cheeks, making his descent he landed on his back with a __graceless thump, never looking at the damaging extent of his mangled left arm. Smears of c__rimson painted over mounds of snow, as his flaying and drenched body carved into the ground. He restored to focus on the faint hitches of breath, tasting blood clog up his lungs. __It hurt to catch air, his ribs felt __detached and puncturing through bruised muscle, and his vision was dimming against a coating of tears._

_ "Steve..." He managed to choke out, trying to lift his dead weight off of the ground, but ridged muscles of his chest throbbed with anguishing thumps and his stomach wouldn't unkink under the tattered jacket. Pain exploded through his body, cries strangled up his throat; he could barely elevate his back an inch off the ground. He was straining against the cold slashes of wind and felt his immobilized body entering a convulsing stage of shock. His ears muffled out the distant sounds of a train horn, and with another mouthful of air, and forcing effort, he raised his hand, setting no resolve on the dark lines of blood sliding over his pale knuckles. He was reaching for the light as every pulse of his body craved for mercy as snow touched his stiffening fingers. Surrendering to death, he voiced out one last pitch of his failing words."Don't forget about me..."_

_It was days before he heard echoes of unknown voices returning through whiteness, the full extent of beta serum Zola repeatedly had injected him with during his experimental trails as a subject for HYDRA's rebirth, had solidified in his bones, every strand of his DNA was alerted to relent against pain. He was being reborn:the eternal grave ice morphed into a cradle. Blood froze in his veins, but his sated mind was aware of the shifting vibrations around him; boots crunched as tall figures wearing fur hats claimed him for the Soviet Army prisons. One stocky blur came into full clarity, as he managed cracked open his eyes, just enough to see Armin Zola standing over him. "Good day to you, Herr Barnes."_

_A butt of a rifle landed into his temple, and Bucky saw drops of jet red spilling out his mouth, tasteless over his chilled lips. His head jerked back in wheezed yelp as Zola's gloved hand seized possession around his throat, squeezing every bit of defiance until he was completely rigid under HYDRA's clutch. Once he was fell into submission, the Swiss doctor offered him no pressure of mercy, stubby fingers jabbed into dislocated bones, delivering a harsh break to fully butcher the soldier's exposed weakness. _

_Bucky screamed as influxes of agony increased, his feverish blue eyes clenched shut and breath collapsed into choking sobs, he was falling captive to Zola's depraved mind, and only prayed that he would receive a soldier's death."It appears we have a lot of work ahead of us, Sergeant James Barnes."_

* * *

Falling back into reality, he quickened his paces with malicious intent, searching down the vast corridor, the Winter Soldier's nose crinkled against the stench of rust that wavered in the air, above him contortions of pipes leaked out remnants of liquid nitrogen, as droplets of frosty blue dribbled into his wolfish mane. He reached his directive point, narrowing his steeled gaze to the door latch, and turned it upwards as creaks revealed emptiness, in that moment he stalked inside, he was greeted by darkness. His fleeting thoughts welcomed the presence of dread. "Avora..." he rasped out, stepping closer to a heap of dark clothing, instantly recognizing that each piece had been stripped off. His carved muscles kinked as he gripped the shirt into the rigid and desperate clutch of his metal hand. "Where are you, ангел?_"_

"Looking for the little brat, Winter?"

"Rumlow?" He growled, offering the operative no silence as he sprang up to full height, his boots melded into the ground, as he held Rumlow's reflection in the second, his cold murderous gaze calculated the distance of his strike zone.

"Were you expecting the little brat to crawl back into your arms, Winter?" Rumlow taunted back in a gruff echo, dryness of empathy was teeming in his throat. His solid weight leaned against the concrete wall, clutching a torn piece of Avora's clothing, almost possessive as his trophy. He didn't attempt to breach the Winter Soldier's space, his dark tinted eyes held a challenging resolve, provoking his equal to engage. "Hate to break it to you, but she's not here...The brat belongs to HYDRA."

Cold embers seared through his bones, and everything went vacant inside. The Winter Soldier had the fuel to engage termination with any means necessary to save Avora, the prolific combat-honed skills he harbored, doused all collective logic rapidly in his mind, and his reserved expression hardened into a vicious scowl, as his metal hand clenched into a fist. There was no display of hesitation in his stance, and Rumlow knew that he just became a target.

The operative's tanned features held no semblance of compromise and both him and the Winter Soldier became parallel in the shadows: two deadly forces preparing to clash into a violent storm of raw brutality. "I thought you didn't care...Since you've always followed orders to execute,but I guess that girl has made you become soft...inferior to HYDRA. How demeaning for you, Bucky,"

_...James Buchanan Barnes..._

For a moment, his recollected memories raced into tumults of distortion. The pulse of his heartbeat accelerated, fueling each unbidden desire to fight against the programming that severed all threads of humanity. Inside he was screaming, but his stance was grounded to remain impassive. It was a damning approach to feel a sharp lance of remorse cutting into his heart... Everything was bleeding out him.

"No..." He hitched out a vicious seethe, harsh to feel clotting in his throat. His glacial blue eyes darkened with malice and feral intent. Rumlow was tormenting him with deception; making him lose focus on the mission. He was designed to function as HYDRA's killing machine, a nameless phantom who had been controlled to isolate weakness in his victims.

This was invalid to reason, a form of sadistic delight for Rumlow's gain. He refused to submit, as the name echoed through the dark edges of his mind. "I don't have a name," He spat, clenching his bristled jaw to exhibit raw frustration. His murderous, calculating gaze didn't waver as he resolved to engage his merciless driven attack."That's a damn lie!"

Rumlow smirked, darkly. "I assure you, Winter, that your real, pathetic name is Bucky Barnes, an old pal of the Brooklyn flag waver himself, dead and gone, Captain America."

"Shut up!"

He was drawn, balefully, from his reverie as he listened to the cold mechanical voice of the PA system drone out through the levels. "_Attention: The forward laboratory will be prepped for surgery in 5 minutes. All medical personnel report to suite 5E. Lockdown procedures initiated."_

The alarming message was like a bucket of cold water thrown over his benumbed posture; it struck a chord of urgency within the Winter Soldier, who had before become distracted by the puzzling images resurfacing in his mind. Time was running out—for both himself and Avora.

The sardonic chuckle wafting from the smirking cruel lips of Rumlow indicated that the Hydra operative knew the exact same. "Not long till the little brat makes a bloody generous donation," he taunted with a sadistic twinkle in his eyes, standing tall and purposeful as he blocked the path ahead that led to the labs. His mission was clear and his method, however daring, had proven effective against the confused and rebellious assassin. "Did you really think you could save her?" Rumlow scoffed with an amused smile as he continued his verbal jab. "You?! You couldn't even save your own ass from falling off a train. The kid is as good as dead!"

The fog of confusion had lifted in the Winter Soldier's mind, only for an inferno of rage to scorch it. A surge of fire ran through his veins, the empowerment of strength and defiance that compelled him to exact his toll of retribution. "NO!" His restraint snapped like so many necks he'd grappled in his lifetime, and he was charging at the Hydra operative fast as a bullet and lethal with the same intent. A ringing blared in his ears, so loud and shrilling it sounded like a scream—his own or of the ghosts he had created. They howled with him in unison as he made his move.

Quick as his reflexes, Rumlow drew his pistol from his holster and fired a straight shot in the Winter Soldier's direction only for it to be dodged by his enhanced speed. The bang reverberated off the walls of the chamber in maddening pulses that Rumlow winced in pain, losing focus of his target who charged at him with animalistic fury waged across his sneering exterior. Winter Soldier retaliated with a winding forward punch of his metal fist to the mercenary's chest. The Kevlar beneath his onslaught cracked against his strength.

Rumlow ignored the crushing pain in his chest, decades worth of field experience and hand-to-hand combat encounters ingrained him with a sense of urgency and reliance on quick-thinking. Any misstep would result in a fatal blow, especially against an opponent as dangerous as The Winter Soldier. Not missing a beat, even as he crashed backwards against a stack of crates, Rumlow took aim again with his pistol and fired at his foe again. The bullets hit their mark this time, two shots struck the Soldier's chest where their advance was halted by his own Kevlar-leather coated vest. "Damn it." The mercenary cursed, watching as the expression on the Soldier's face became a chilling mask of absence.

That wasn't good. Winter Soldier was a tool to be used for one thing: inflicting death. He felt no remorse, no pain nor fear of self-preservation when activated. There was not a thing that could stop him from executing his target. His fists clenched as a surge of dominance pulsed through him, and he continued his attack with a devastating front kick, the muscle of his hip recoiled as he delivered- propelled- his boot into his opponent's armored chest, knocking him off balance to the ground. As harrowing as the attack felt, Rumlow felt a foreboding as his hearing detected a snarl from the Soldier's lips, "You die."

Sensing his advantage, Winter Soldier rushed his downed opponent with his metal fist raised, bringing it downward—only to connect with concrete once Rumlow evaded him. The operative was quick, his adrenaline rushing with his instincts as he swept his leg against Winter Soldier's ankles and brought the assassin crashing down onto his back. "You first, freak." The operative sneered, discarding his empty pistol and lifting a 200lb metal crate over his head with a strenuous demeanor. Winter Soldier reacted sharply and rolled backwards in time to avoid the crushing weight brought down in front of him. A deafening thud echoed throughout the chamber, but above the hollowing noise, Winter Soldier could hear the PA system continue to drone out, **"**_The forward laboratory will be prepped for surgery in 4 minutes. All medical personnel report to suite 5E. Lockdown procedure initiated."_

Winter Soldier sheltered himself from the stabbing sense of urgency, even as it clawed at the surface of his patience in an effort to overwhelm his self-control. His struggle however, was magnified by the harsh noise of his hands balling into fists; his fierce shadowed glare never leaving Rumlow. The mercenary was quick to resume his assault by kicking a smaller crate towards Winter Soldier's face. The assassin effortlessly swats the metal object away with his arm, but the distraction granted enough time for Rumlow to charge and tackle his opponent towards the wall with a yell. "Give it up!" Filled with aggression, he head-butted the Soldier repeatedly until his offense is countered by a knee to his stomach.

Growling, The Winter Soldier kneed the operative's stomach again even harder until Rumlow doubles over with a gasp. His teeth bared into a snarl of ruthlessness, the Soldier grapples the operative by his torso and drives a vicious forearm down across his spine to shatter his resilience, then follows up by grappling his foe by his back and throwing him hard against the wall with immense strength. "Never!" He roared, a rising desperation brewing within as his emotions slowly began to creep back into his being. He felt sheer adrenaline and power pulse through his being, its capacity beyond measure, his killer instinct on high alert. The impulses screamed through him like sirens, they guided his actions and he swung his cybernetic fist with murderous intent towards his rising opponent.

"You will not take her!" He cried, though his swing missed the still sharp mercenary by inches, the impact left a visible crack against the wall of the chamber. Rumlow staggered on his feet, his sweaty complexion a wash of pain and exertion but there was no sign of relent in his posture. Despite the number of aching points in his battered body, the Hydra soldier gave no pause as he resumed his offense—swinging towards Bucky with a haymaker only to have it blocked. Unyielding, Rumlow continued his attack by shoving the Soldier back to allow space then resumed his offense with a shuffling side sick. Winter Soldier blocked each strike with equal movements of his own, their speed and precision a prowess to be unmatched by any they've fought before.

Their violent barrage became a dance of skill; their music, the bone crushing noises of limbs colliding and yells of aggression. Rumlow felt frustration seeping into his sweaty pores, the urge to kill his opponent becoming ever stronger with each passing moment as he failed to gain an advantage in their brutal exchange. A judo kick to the Soldier's waist was blocked by an elbow; yet for his part, Rumlow managed to evade the Soldier's roundhouse kick and answered with his own cobra strike to the chest then a staggering backhand to the face. Winter Soldier startled backwards, his frosty gaze became daggers as he tasted blood on his lip. "Bet you didn't think you could bleed, did you?" Rumlow taunted, panting for breath, "don't worry. That was just a taste."

Pointedly, Rumlow unsheathed a combat knife from his belt; the blade scraped against its sheath in a calling gesture to the focused assassin who glared at it fixedly. A dangerous glint shone in Winter Soldier's eyes, his loose fingers at his side reflexively twitched. "You're going back in the freezer…" Gritting his teeth, Rumlow snarled and made his move with a precision dash, thrusting the sharpened knife edge in a side-ways motion towards the Soldier's neck. "Permanently this time!" The Hydra mercenary continued his rant, swiping again towards the face once his first attempt had been evaded.

The Winter Soldier ignored the threats, his calculating mind trained on the trajectory of Rumlow's attacks and waited for his opening while evading at the same time. Rumlow showed only the slightest sign of fatigue in his movements, but as he pressed his advantage on Winter Soldier to maneuver him towards the back wall, his opponent seized his wrist in the clutches of his metallic hand and retaliated with a winding punch to the face with his right hand.

_"The forward laboratory will be prepped for surgery in 3 minutes."_ The cold reminder of the loss of time pricked at the assassin's nerves, shredding the vestiges of his detached patience that he couldn't force himself to ignore the warning. Rumlow appeared just as vexed at the slow passage of time in distracting this rampaging beast; his efforts to shred him yielded only a tear across his leather tactical vest, but nothing more grievous. He resumed his knife attack, this time with a spin kick added to his offense. His opponent blocked the attack with elbows but startled as he felt a brush of air across his face; he felt a jerk in against his long dark tresses and watched as the two of his locks were snapped away by the edge of the blade, meant to slash his face.

A cold smirk traced Rumlow's lips; a small victory as he gauged the Winter Soldier's ebbing focus that would no doubt play to his advantage. For a short yet tense moment, their burning stares remained locked, the mercenary still guarding the path to Avora with his held in a stood ready with his fists raised in a boxing stance. Rumlow stood breathless from exertion while the Winter Soldier remained calm. Unruffled at the thought of toying with his foe, Rumlow feinted a strike only to chuckle at the Winter Soldiers stoic demeanor. "Not even a blink? Can't see what the kid could appreciate from a twisted freak like yourself." He baited the Soldier, seeking to prey on his emotions and blind him from absolute focus. To his utter dismay, the Soldier's deadened eyes held only a murderous gleam in their depths—nothing broken or shattered, only magnified.

"All right then…" Rumlow sneered, curling his fingers into a dead hold around his knife, he made his last attempt to stab his enemy who reacted sharply. Winter Soldier caught Rumlow's arm, and with merciless force, brought the elbow down hard against the top of his shoulder; he listened with grim satisfaction as the bone snapped and a howl of agony erupted from the mercenary's throat. His instincts sharp, the Soldier watched as the knife fell free from the fingertips and fell into space in front of him until it was claimed by his reaching hand…

In a swift and devastating maneuver, the assassin spun and lodged the blade through a crack in the Kevlar and into the abdomen of the mercenary. Rumlow remained on his feet, despite what came next for him was a scorching white-hot pain spreading through every nerve in his body. A breathless gasp lingered at the tip of his tongue, his dark brown eyes glassy and wide in shock. Winter Soldier looks on, with a worn look through the bangs covering his brow as the mercenary stumbled off balance and ungracefully fell to the ground. Wincing as he pulled the knife with bloodied hands. Their fight had now reached its end; the Winter Soldier stood tall but felt no victory in his being—nothing would grant him that feeling if he failed to reached the lab in time.

_"The forward laboratory will be prepped for surgery in 2 minutes."_ Sparing Rumlow a withering glance, Winter Soldier made his way forward across the clear path of the chamber. "I-It won't matter…" Rumlow grunted, covering his wound that didn't feel fatal, but completely left him at his opponent's mercy. An inkling of dread filled him as he contemplated the manner of which the assassin would finish him off. "…You won't be able to save her," he spat defiantly, a strained chuckle on his lips, "she's—" A harsh boot slammed against his head in a harsh kick. The darkness of slumber greeted him as Rumlow fell unconscious.

"Я до сих пор попробую. (I will still try.)" Winter Soldier released a shaky breath, no longer hindered by an obstacle as he continued down the path out of the ISO chamber and towards the laboratory wing.

* * *

When the elevator gated doors slid upwards, Avora displayed no measures of reluctance in her hushed strides Madame HYDRA's cold grasp steered her impassive body through the bowels of the labyrinthine, shadowy hazes of blue light veiled over her pale skin as she obeyed every command that the untraceable voices hollowly echoed back, no faltering balance traced her steps, just complete submission of a response to her mistress's lucid calls.

"You do not have far to go, child...The ascension of a new life for HYDRA is almost in your grasp." The pristine HYDRA enforcer hissed coolly, her breath rasped over to the girl's ear, with sadistic emotion rising in her voice. Avora didn't whimper as the strength of Madame HYDRA's leather gloved fingers coiled possessively around her neck, much like a viper, testing the pulse of its dormant prey.

Listening to the child rasp out a breath; it gave Madame HYDRA satisfaction as her polished emerald lips twisted into a vile satire of a devilish smirk, knowing that she had obtained full dominance of the latest victim of HYDRA's evolution."You have no idea the extent of the value that is contained in your blood...You were birthed into this irrelevant world for a reason...In time, you will learn to harness that power you feel, do you understand, child?"

"Yes, I understand, Mistress," Avora responded in a low voice, impotent to abstain a cry as the dark presence steered her onward. She felt numbness overtake her body; not registering the prick of the needle that jabbed into her arm as flaring pain became converted into ice and the distinct stench of blood awakened the ominous aura filtering in her veins. Hands of lab technicians yanked the material of her shirt, ushering her paces closer to the steel doors powered with hydraulics, a cold wave of air clashed against her exposed skin and darkness was all that reflected back to her.


End file.
